“Philosophy of Space Exploration” UTSA’s First Metaverse Course

(TNS) — Anna Vescio floated contained in the Worldwide Space Station in late November because it orbited 250 miles above Earth. She met astronauts who confirmed her the station, noticed its scientific devices and tools and noticed how its occupants dwell in house.

Then she eliminated her virtual-reality headset and was again within the Alamo Metropolis.

In earlier years, Vescio, a junior on the College of Texas at San Antonio, may need mentioned subjects such because the station and different issues associated to house exploration in a classroom or by way of Zoom. However due to know-how and UTSA professors embracing it, she was capable of tour the house station with out leaving residence.

Vescio is amongst 23 UTSA college students who lately accomplished a category titled “Philosophy of Space Exploration” — the college’s first course set fully within the metaverse, an immersive model of the Web accessed by way of virtual-reality headsets, augmented actuality glasses, telephone apps or different units.

College students within the class, outfitted with Meta Quest 2 VR headsets, embody 3D avatars to take part in tutorial discussions, watch interactive movies of SpaceX’s launch of the Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral in Florida and consider footage from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

“It’s so much easier to pay attention in the metaverse,” Vescio mentioned after the ultimate class of the autumn semester. “In regular Zoom classes, I can get distracted and look at my phone. But when you’re in VR you’re all in it. It looks like you’re in the space station, and you can see the astronauts’ close quarters.”

Chris Packham and Serife Tekin, the professors who developed and taught the course, had been smitten by their potential to draw and have interaction college students concerned about biology, astronomy, philosophy and different tutorial fields.

“This was all an experiment at some level,” Packham, a professor in UTSA’s physics and astronomy division, advised his college students because the course concluded. “I think it worked out quite well. It wouldn’t surprise me that components of this course will be in other courses you encounter at UTSA.”

Tekin, the UTSA Medical Humanities director and philosophy professor, congratulated college students and advised them she hopes the course elevated their consciousness of “the resources philosophy and critical thinking can provide.”

In actual fact, directors are intently observing the professors’ and college students’ experiences to find out whether or not they need to provide extra lessons utilizing augmented and digital actuality.

‘SAME DISCIPLINE’

In fall 2021, Packham and Tekin partnered with colleague Carmen Fies, an affiliate professor of STEM training, to plan educate the category amid a rising curiosity in space-related issues throughout Texas.

The trio talked about NASA’s longtime presence on the Johnson Space Heart in Houston and Elon Musk’s SpaceX compound in Boca Chica, the place the house engineering firm is planning to launch the Starship rocket system into orbit for the primary time.

On the time, Tekin was finishing a fellowship on the Heart for Philosophy of Science on the College of Pittsburgh. Packham — a board member of the worldwide science staff Galactic Exercise, Torus and Outflow Survey — was awaiting info from the Webb Telescope that may allow him to review how galaxies work together with black holes about 130 million light-years from Earth.

The pair mixed their experience to type the brand new class.

“When you look at the history of philosophy, you will see that it was the mother discipline that had the humanities and the sciences contained,” Tekin mentioned whereas creating the course in March. “A lot of our first physicists and scientists were also philosophers.”

Packham agreed that philosophers have lengthy appeared to the celebs.

“When we think about the Big Bang or life on other planets, these are some of the grandest philosophical questions that have ever entertained philosophers way back to Socrates and Plato,” he mentioned. “At its core, science and philosophy are the same discipline.”

Fies, an skilled in pedagogy, helped the professors create a syllabus that may entice college students concerned about each astronomy and philosophy.

“Life doesn’t happen in little pockets that are isolated, and you can address with blinders on,” she mentioned. “To now cross apply that is where the power of the course is.”

UTSA AND VR

Universities throughout america are investing within the metaverse.

MBA college students at Dartmouth School are logging right into a digital actuality class to find out about enterprise markets in South India. The College of Kansas College of Nursing-Salina launched its “Metaversity” providing immersive medical studying. College students at Morehouse School in Atlanta are utilizing digital actuality to tour the Underground Railroad as they find out about Black historical past.

In Texas, mass communication college students at Sam Houston State College use digital actuality to review new know-how and the Imaginative and prescient, Cognition, and Motion VR Lab on the College of Texas at Austin’s Heart for Perceptual Methods makes use of Meta VR headsets to review human habits and organic movement. In San Antonio, professors have additionally used digital actuality to show biology college students about protein constructions.

With such developments in thoughts, Packham and Tekin sought to co-teach UTSA’s top notch primarily based fully within the metaverse.

In Might, Packham approached the college’s division of Educational Innovation, which is tasked with introducing lecturers to consultants in know-how and digital studying to deliver cutting-edge tech onto campus.

“VR is coming to education,” Packham recalled telling directors. “Does UTSA want to lead or follow?”

The college purchased 30 Meta VR headsets and controllers, beforehand branded as Oculus. Meta Platforms Inc., the father or mother firm of Fb, had offered the nearly actuality system, together with the headsets and controllers, for practically $300 apiece.

Fies mentioned the college was on board to discover ways to use the know-how in STEM-related programs.

“These are super powerful technology tools,” she mentioned. “You can get a quasi-direct experience with something that really doesn’t exist in the space that you’re in…. You can make use of that as if you were in the physical environment with things that you see on that screen.”

CREATING THE SYLLABUS

Within the syllabus for “Philosophy of Space Exploration,” Packham and Tekin mentioned there are intervals in humanity — akin to the commercial revolution, the primary house race and the knowledge age — when a “true inflection point in advancement occurs.”

They see humanity coming into one other such interval involving the fast exploration of close by and outer house, whose actions increase moral implications.

“How can the problems of past ‘frontier’ exploitations be avoided?” they ask within the syllabus, which acknowledged that by the top of the three credit-hour course, college students would be capable of “evaluate the difference and relationships between science and pseudo-science” and “apply digital literacy tools to illustrate and articulate space-related issues.”

Through the fall semester, college students learn the works of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Within the metaverse, they engaged in earnest tutorial debate over the advantages and dangers of house exploration, the definitions of life and sentient artificial-intelligent life, the explanations for attainable exploration and settlement of the moon and Mars, and the ethics of “terrestrial” local weather change and the militarization of house.

“We asked opening questions like, ‘Who owns the moon?’ ‘Who owns Mars?'” Packham mentioned. “Then, we can go deeper. What is life? And that question might become more important as we explore Mars.”

College students initially discovered such inquiries to be far-fetched. However most mentioned they finally grasped their relevance as NASA and personal firms have ramped up efforts to discover house and carry astronauts to the moon and past.

SpaceX had already signed onto NASA’s Artemis program for the third mission later within the decade. A Starship rocket is predicted to dock with the Orion capsule in orbit across the moon and take two astronauts to the lunar floor. In the meantime, Musk continues to tout his long-term plans of utilizing Starship to colonize Mars.

“This is all just around the corner,” Packham mentioned. “We’re going to have to face these questions imminently.”

‘EASIER BEHIND THE AVATAR’

In a current class session, professors and college students met within the metaverse to debate the philosophy of synthetic intelligence.

They created avatars resembling themselves, together with their types of clothes, whose mouths moved once they spoke. Equally, their avatars would mirror their actions once they raised their palms or shifted of their chairs to handle classmates and professors.

A number of college students sat in a classroom in UTSA’s Utilized Engineering and Know-how Constructing whereas their avatars loved a category with an ocean view and digital waves breaking earlier than them.

General, the category went easily. However as with different types of digital communication, college students who sat close to each other typically skilled static of their headsets and video delays.

And college students required five-minute breaks often because the digital actuality headsets could cause complications and nausea.

Whitney O’Connell, an educational designer in UTSA’s Educational Innovation division, mentioned — within the metaverse — that she was accumulating pupil surveys concerning their experiences to research on the finish of the semester.

“Over the years, UTSA professors have used VR on an extremely rare basis, but now it’s really catching on,” O’Connell mentioned. “Now we’re asking, ‘Does the use of VR impact the student learning experience? Is it helping the students learn better?'”

To this point, she mentioned there’s been “a lot of positive responses.”

Vescio, a biology main, had by no means used digital actuality know-how and — like others within the class — did not understand she’d be utilizing Meta Quest 2 VR headsets till she appeared on the syllabus.

“I just thought the course sounded interesting,” she mentioned. “I had no idea about the VR.”

As soon as she placed on the headset she got here to understand the metaverse’s benefits as she spoke via her avatar.

“It feels real,” she mentioned. “Sometimes, I get nervous speaking in front of classes. But it’s easier behind the avatar. It eases my anxiety.”

‘LIKE A FIELD TRIP TIMES 1,000’

The professors plan to write down tutorial papers to share what they’ve discovered via surveys and different knowledge with UTSA directors and the astronomical, training and philosophical communities.

They’re additionally set to offer a presentation in January at an American Astronomical Society assembly in Seattle.

Each Packham and Tekin mentioned they consider the digital actuality know-how helped introduce college students to philosophy and astronomy, which they take into account difficult subjects that many shrink back from.

“My biggest challenge is to get rid of their fears around science or space knowledge,” Tekin mentioned. “They always think of science as difficult to fathom. At first, they were nervous. But I think the VR goggles were helpful, because they could explore the ISS and other places and became more empowered as they understood.”

“You can’t be afraid of something that you actually understand,” she mentioned. “VR helped make it better.”

College students from varied tutorial backgrounds mentioned they loved the category. And, equally to Vescio, most talked about how digital actuality helped them overcome struggles in focus they expertise in lecture rooms and extra conventional on-line class periods.

“I have immense struggles to focus elsewhere,” mentioned Alex Roush, an environmental science main who’s concerned about researching photo voltaic system planetary atmospheres to raised perceive local weather change. “The VR feels like a field trip times 1,000. When we put the goggles on and went to the ISS, I felt different.”

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