After
posting Nevada
State College Flies High , I decided
to pay a site visit to the venerable college. That’s because it’s always good
to test one’s assumptions against hard reality. Wanting to see 3D in action,
hoping to determine if these undergraduate classrooms were indeed using stereo
3D in unparalleled ways, I ventured forth. The site visit was well worth my
time.
Nevada
State College, which is located just outside of Las Vegas, began a high
visibility 3D project this fall by purchasing and implementing a stereo 3D
learning approach in all of their undergraduate science and nursing classes.
This represents a significant step, because most stereo 3D projects at the
college level take place in a single classroom of an interested professor—and not
broadly across a curriculum.
 |
| Professor Vikash Patel |
As
I stealthily crept into the back of the classroom, the day’s lesson already
underway, I took note of the physical lay of the land. The classroom was a
typical college setting, with tabletops, whiteboards, a screen, projector, and
significant digital lectern space. On the wall, above the whiteboard, a large
3D display monitor was mounted. The high-energy instructor, professor Vikash
Patel, was busy cajoling, informing, and questioning a room full of mixed-gender
nursing students. All in all, the scene remained quite unremarkable, at least from
my higher-ed perspective.
 |
| Stereo 3D and 2D side-by-side at Nevada State College |
What
I witnessed next, however, was indeed quite remarkable and informative on many
levels. Come back next week for the details and my concluding post on some very exemplary 3D
teaching and learning.
