Cultural immersion is a tried-and-true method for teaching languages. Typically, U.S. students travel abroad-to Europe, Latin America, Asia and beyond, to take a deep dive into the customs, mores, daily life and conversational language that can be challenging to master from home.
For those students who can't take advantage of the study-abroad experience, there's another option to gain similar learnings.
At UC, the Curricular Enhancement, Development, Access and Research Language Resource Center (CEDAR) has developed a curriculum that features virtual reality (VR) technology to give students a similar opportunity right in the classroom.
UC's Department of Romance Languages and Literatures is no stranger to curricular innovation.
In early 2021, with travel restrictions still in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the department developed a way for students to experience language immersion even though they were stuck stateside.
To create its VR program, the CEDAR team followed a model inspired by a Harvard University professor who had developed a similar program based in Paris.
"We wanted to transfer that model to the U.S. to focus on the plurilingual landscape we find here,' said Moranski. "So, we decided to base our VR projects on the Hispanic American and the Arab American communities.
"That way, we aim to promote a better understanding of the globalized communities we find in this country nowadays."
The CEDAR team designed and created all aspects of the VR language experience in UC's curriculum. Content creators have worked with original footage, such as recordings of daily life in Jerez de la Frontera, a small town in the south of Spain.
The content creators have also worked with researchers locally to record videos for their projects here in greater Cincinnati.
While the curriculum is being developed, research is ongoing to understand the efficacy of the program, and ways it might be adapted going forward, as program directors study VR for classroom use.
Working with UC's Center for Simulation and Virtual Environments Research (UCSIM) and others, the team continues to study and refine the impact of these materials for language learners and share that knowledge with educators throughout the country, Moranski says.
Featured image at top: People demonstrate the VR capabilities available through UC's CEDAR language center. Photo/Lauren Carr
