U-I digital twin campus. (U-I photo)
University of Iowa officials will cut a virtual ribbon during an online ceremony this afternoon to open what’s known as a digital twin replica campus. The so-called “metaversity” will be used for online learning as well as campus labs for residential students.
Steve Grubbs is the founder of Victory-XR, a Davenport-based tech company that creates 3-D immersive educational environments.
“We built a replica of the University of Iowa campus, primarily the Pentacrest and the Tippie College of Business,” Grubbs says. “We built it in the metaverse so that students who are remote or potentially on campus could go to class, just as if they were actually on campus.”
Most online remote learning today is accomplished through a tool like Zoom, where you can’t use your hands, but Grubbs says most learning requires us to be hands-on. “So what we provided was a solution that allows students to be remote, to be online, but to use
Digital campus. (U-I photo)
their hands to manipulate tools,” Grubbs says, “to go back in time and visit historical locations, or to work with other students on small projects and then come back together.”
Today’s launch of the Metaversity of Iowa will only make a couple of courses available, for starters. “For students who are attending those particular courses, they can attend from anywhere in the world,” Grubbs says. “Students from Hong Kong, let’s say, could attend the University of Iowa, walk around campus and attend class just as if they were actually in Iowa City.”
Other Big Ten schools are using virtual reality for this type of distance learning, but Grubbs says the U-I is going a step further.
“The University of Iowa is the first school to launch a full digital twin campus,” Grubbs says. “What we believe and what we’re seeing, we have 100 colleges and universities we work with across the United States and around the world, is that people see this as the future because remote learning is growing.” He says 40-percent of today’s students are already taking classes remotely.
Click on this link to see a video of the digital campus: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S4Iase3fhixEHp_MV2ikfkwcoo49pkeu/view?usp=share_link