Virtual Reality as a Metamedium
Virtual reality should be understood as a dynamic instantiator of ideas, rather than a concept that can hardly be pinned down. It is a metamedium within which essentially any other media can be reproduced, Joakim Vindenes claims.
Even future media, still non-existent, can be reproduced within VR. In that sense, each form of virtual reality is a medium unto itself. For teachers of such technologies, the reproduction aspects challenge the teaching and learning of VR. The metamedium is best experienced by actively engaging with features through creative exploration. Exemplified through eight student productions made in virtual reality, Joakim Vindenes will discuss the advantages of innovation pedagogy as an exploratory approach. He will in particular focus on the insights he got from instantiating various designs in collaboration with the students.
Joakim Vindenes is a PhD candidate at the Centre for the Science of Learning & Technology at the University of Bergen. His PhD work addresses user experience of immersive media from a (post) phenomenological perspective. His blog matrise.no and his YouTube channel AltVR attract much attention.
Joakim Vindenes
University of Bergen, Norway