by David Matthews, Times Higher Education
You may soon be engulfed by a new wave of predictions that the days of the physical university are numbered. A few years ago, just about every interested publication in print, ran an article that asked a question along the lines of: “will Moocs replace the university?” In 2017, unless we’ve learned lessons from the Moocs hype cycle, expect to read plenty of headlines that ask: “will virtual reality replace universities?” As we detail in a feature this week, advocates of virtual reality are claiming that after donning a headset, students will feel like they really are in a lecture hall speaking with their lecturers and classmates. It could make online learning as engaging and immersive as a campus, they claim, solving the problems that dogged massive open online courses. The trouble with this kind of techno-optimism about new ways to deliver teaching – be it through Moocs or VR – is that it rests on the quaint idea that the main point of going to university is to acquire knowledge.
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/vr-universities-dont-believe-all-hype
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