There’s a wave of immersive experience hitting the education sector. And it’s just a matter of time before Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) is interested to pilot an experimental program using XR.

A Senior lecturer in Information System faculty is leading this bold experiment for one of his programming subjects – Introduction to Python. Initially they’re using physical 2-wheeled robots to foster the learning experience.

Then they came up to us with the idea of replacing a physical robot with the virtual one in AR or VR.

This move was actually started because they found some problems with the current physical system:

• Hardware failures due to mishandling by students.
• A lot of wasted time spent in debugging hardware-related issues instead of teaching programming.
• A series of hardware changes because of procurement & logistic issues.
• Very rigid structure – very difficult to change the curriculum due to being tied to a specific hardware with proprietery connection protocol.

From our experience, we knew right away that AR is gonna be perfect for solving all of the above problems.

Since the students and other lecturers were already familiar with the current robot, we thought that it would be wise to start off by replicating the exact same experience. So it will be the same robot with the same input commands but in AR.

We conducted the pilot program in August and were blown away by the overwhelmingly positive response. Found out about our project in the following video:

This is just the beginning.

SUTD is interested in taking this further. Some of the prominent ideas are:

• Change the theme to RPG game instead of robot to appeal more to students. Think of a small dungeon where the students are learning programming by navigating the character, eliminate enemies and find treasures. These are actually the same set mechanics as with the robot. But just by changing the external design, students can learn the same skill but with more positive attitude in solving the problems.
• Branch out to other subjects or even Final Year Projects. Since the digital content is much cheaper than most physical apparatus, much can be saved by moving to XR.
• Include collaborative elements so multiple students and even facilitators can see and interact with the same virtual content.

We are so excited to have this privilege in bringing education system to be more focused in the “education” part and less attached to the rigid “system”.