New Professor Receives Grant to Integrate Extended Reality Into Education

Austin Cook

Alejandro Martin-Gomez

Alejandro Martin-Gomez, a new assistant professor at the U of A, received an Honors College Faculty Equipment and Technology Grant to help spearhead an initiative to enhance the educational experience of STEM students through extended reality (XR) technologies. With his new grant, Martin-Gomez plans to identify courses that would benefit from XR's immersive capabilities, aiming to make challenging concepts more accessible.

Martin-Gomez explained that traditional learning methods often rely on two-dimensional visual aids like whiteboards or digital models. However, these methods can pose challenges for students studying complex, three-dimensional topics.

XR technologies offer students an opportunity to view and interact with models in a 3D space, simulating physical objects.

"If you change your viewpoint, you can see the virtual content like they were physical objects in 3D," Martin-Gomez said, adding that this immersive experience helps students "reduce the mental load" of translating 3D concepts to 2D spaces.

The project will initially target courses with high potential for XR integration, focusing on specific topics that would naturally benefit from 3D visualization. Potential subjects include linear algebra, where students often struggle to visualize 3D vectors on a 2D board, and electromagnetism, which requires conceptualizing electric and magnetic fields.

While the concept of using XR in education is not entirely new, Martin-Gomez noted that past applications were mostly limited to fields like manufacturing, citing an early system used by Boeing for airplane wiring. For this project, he intends to focus on integrating XR directly into the university's curriculum, a move that he believes will be innovative within the academic setting.

In collaboration with undergraduate students from the Honors College, Martin-Gomez aims to develop XR learning experiences. These students will gain hands-on experience with the technology, and the team will engage with instructors to explore ways of incorporating XR modules into their courses.

Ultimately, Martin-Gomez envisions a broader implementation. He believes augmented and virtual reality would be a great resource in helping students learn and hopes that someday in the future university libraries will be able to make these resources available for students across disciplines. One possible application includes anatomy, where 3D models could allow students to examine bodily structures in detail, rotating and layering virtual images to better understand muscle and bone configurations.

If successful, Martin-Gomez's pilot program could expand into other courses and even serve as a model for other universities.

"The overall goal is to improve the learning experience, make it more efficient and hopefully integrate it properly into the curriculum," he said.

Martin-Gomez, who teaches in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, hopes to have initial results to share with the academic community in the coming months.