We are pleased to announce the Virtual Immersive Teaching and Learning (VITaL) initiative was selected as a 2019 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report exemplar from over 60 submissions from various institutions in the United States and internationally. The Horizon Report is a research-oriented effort that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have considerable impact on teaching, learning, and creative expression within higher education.

The VITaL initiative provides a variety of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) immersive tools for use across the pedagogical spectrum and San Diego State University. VITaL serves as an incubator to enable experiences that would otherwise be out of reach in a traditional learning environment, including low-frequency, high-risk scenarios simulating life-threatening medical conditions, celestial events in outer space, and scientific phenomena at the micro scale. VITaL currently serves immersive teaching, learning, and research in 35 courses across all colleges at SDSU. The VITaL initiative also enables faculty to partner with industry and student organizations to develop and test educational simulation software. The full list of courses participating in the VITaL initiative is available here.