After months of construction, the Campbell Library has finally put its finishing touches on its brand new immersive learning center, Dreamscape Learn.

In the first week of February, a handful of students will begin exploring a biology course through a virtual reality (VR) headset in two special classrooms, referred to as “pods,” located on the fourth floor of the Campbell Library. The pods have seats for up to 30 students to engage in a one-of-a-kind learning environment.

“We’re creating our own content, so it’s anything from zen gardens, so students can come in and relieve stress at the end of the day, to nursing programs, to medical applications, to do a physics-based one as well, several other ones,” said George Lecakes, Ph.D, the Associate Director of VR for Rowan University’s New Machine & Artificial Intelligence VR Center, MAVRC.

Dreamscape Learn was co-founded in 2019 by Dreamscape Immersive co-founder and movie producer Walter Parkes, as well as Arizona State University (ASU) president Michael Crow.

Rowan University then became the first college to get involved in introducing a virtual reality-based curriculum outside of ASU. Dreamscape Learn’s technology has been adopted by 13 different institutions, not including Rowan.

Each “immersive course” contains six different modules containing a three-act process. Overall, each module would take about three weeks to complete, marking the total time for each course to take roughly two semesters.

“When they come together, they’re working on secondary disciplines such as problem-solving, analytic reasoning, communication, healthy discourse,” said Mark Gierach, a Solutions Consultant with Dreamscape Learn.

Currently, the only courses that have been implemented into Dreamscape Learn include biology, chemistry, and art history. Within this partnership, Gierach says, Dreamscape Learn and Rowan University are looking to create all kinds of experiences for students with different focuses.

“Our job is to make sure that we can get and voice your desires and make even better improvements not only for chemistry but for all other courses that will soon be developed,” said Gierach.

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