While students may not be able to walk along the cobbled paths of Italy or see the beaches of Colombia this semester, the University of South Florida wants to bring those study abroad experiences to students virtually.
The university partnered with the Study Abroad Association this summer to offer a program that uses virtual reality to take students through Italy to learn more about climate change. The students, who were in a biology course, were supposed to travel to Peru before the coronavirus pandemic hit and "the dominos all fell down."
"Having to cancel our on-the-ground trip, we found out that SAA was trying to launch virtual programs and we saw it as a good opportunity to pilot," Owen Hooper, USF's director of innovative education, said. "We knew we would have a good quality VR experience for our students, but what [the Study Abroad Association] produced was beyond what we believed could be done in such a short amount of time."
The program is part of the university's Summer Academic and Cultural Engagement program, which typically has students undergo three weeks of learning and one week of traveling to places that correspond to what they learned. Roughly 75 percent of the traveling is typically internationally.
In the virtual program, students were able to attend prerecorded virtual tours and lectures that took place in more than 10 cities over a 16-day period.
"In critical times, opportunities and innovation present themselves,” Christian Alyea, co-founder of Study Abroad Association, said in a statement. “How do we reduce financial risk and liability for institutions and students and make programs more accessible for students, while still providing an in-depth international experience? The answer is to go virtual.”
Despite the status of Covid-19 next summer, Hooper is aiming for every student in his program to experience some type of virtual reality programming.
"Even if we are traveling, if we have students going to Costa Rica, it will be neat for students to have an opportunity to compare their experiences with a virtual tour through Venice and compare interactions," Hooper said. "It adds another depth to what they're learning."
And with the low cost of the VR programming compared to in-person travel, the university's main study abroad program is also taking a look at virtual options.
"For the VR experience, finance isn’t a factor — we're not chasing scholarship money, or students aren’t saying 'No' because they can't afford a plane ticket," he said. "It's wonderful to be able to continue to expand these programs so any student at USF can have this opportunity."
