Overcoming challenges when teaching hands-on courses about Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality: Methods, techniques and best practice

This paper presents methods and techniques for teaching Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) that were conceived and refined during more than 20 years of our teaching experience on these subjects in higher education. We cover a broad spectrum from acquainting learners with VR and AR as only one aspect of a more general course to an in-depth course on VR and AR during a whole semester. The focus of the paper is methods and techniques that allow learners to not only learn about VR and AR on a theoretical level but that facilitate their own VR and AR experiences with all senses and foster hands-on learning. We show why this is challenging (e.g., the high workload involved with the preparation of hands-on experiences, the large amount of course time that needs to be devoted), and how these challenges can be met (e.g., using our Circuit Parcours Technique). Moreover, we discuss learning goals that can be addressed in VR and AR courses besides hands-on experiences when using our methods and techniques. Finally, we provide best practice examples that can be used as blueprints for parts of a VR and AR course.