Stoke-on-Trent College

Stoke-on-Trent College : Shared VR across the curriculum

As the largest provider of further education in Stoke and North Staffordshire, Stoke-on-Trent College provides around 10,000 students each year with full-time and part-time study programmes, apprenticeships, professional qualifications, and university-level courses.

The College aims to unleash its students’ talents and prepare them for the world of work - and following a £36million transformation, it became home to a range of advanced education facilities for students to enjoy. Those facilities now include two Igloo immersive cylinders, installed on the College’s Cauldon and Burslem campuses.

The goal was to offer an immersive learning experience for a range of subjects, including Construction & Engineering, Childcare, and Game Design. So, Igloo immersive technology was ideal - we offer an open, content-agnostic platform, with an ever-growing range of industry-standard integrations.

For example:

• Students in Construction & Engineering can get right inside Building Information Models (BIM) through our integrations with tools like Revizto, ArchiCAD, Autodesk, and more
• Game Design students can share their VR games with their peers, thanks to the Igloo Unreal plugin
• Childcare students get experience of their future workplaces and practice in identifying potential hazards in nurseries through 360° images captured by the College

And, for the ultimate immersive experience, we specified 3D projectors from our good friends at Digital Projection. Equipped with active-shutter stereoscopic glasses, students aren’t just surrounded by the wraparound Igloo screen, but can truly move in and around their models and designs.

Stoke-on-Trent College has also spent time creating its own content, such as 360° photos of commercial kitchens for its Hospitality & Catering students, and 3D anatomy and physiology models for Sports Science students.

Though the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic pushed back the College’s plans to further embed the Igloos into the various courses, watch this space for the official launch later in 2020.