Institute of Historical and Cultural Anthropology

Virtual Reality in university engineering education (ViRAI)

Funding

Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts

In Kooperation with Institute of Human Factors and Technology Management (IAT) at the University of Stuttgart
Project Management

Prof. Dr. Reinhard Johler

Helen Ahner, MA

Research Associate Felix Masarovic, StEX
Duration

02/2020 to 02/2022

As part of the ViRAI project, Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies are being introduced into engineering education at the University of Stuttgart. The LUI accompanies the introduction of the technologies ethnographically and asks how learning and university teaching are changed by the new technologies, which ways of dealing with and through the technical artefacts are established and how they are negotiated and become effective as social actors. From a cultural studies perspective, it also asks how the technicised and digitalised everyday life of university members interacts with their concepts of knowledge and knowledge transfer, how they experience themselves and their lifeworld as digital, and what constitutes the core of this experience.
With this interdisciplinary project, the LUI is setting a new focus in cultural studies research on science, technology and digital everyday life, which will be further expanded in the future.