1. GatorVRse: Virtual Reality for Social Good
JOU 4930 (Section 77B2 - Undergraduates)
MMC 6936 (Section 77E7 - Graduate)
Summer 2017
Dr. Shiva Halan

2. Reflection moment What is Virtual Reality (VR)? Why do we need VR?
What can you do with/in VR?
How do we do VR?

3. Introductions Name Year Department/Major Prior VR experience
Interests/Hobbies
Breath-taking real world experience
Breath-taking virtual experience

4. Background for the course
Media Effects and Technology Lab – formed January 2017
Dr. Sri Kalyanaraman – Professor in Journalism, Founder-Director
“Serve as an interdisciplinary collaboratory to design, develop, and disseminate the effects of media content and technologies to improve the human spirit and condition”
Collaborators around campus looking at VR to solve their problems – Seekers
Students around campus looking to gain VR experience – Solvers
Bringing the seekers and solvers together for the greater & Gator good

5. Why take this course? Learn VR design and development skills
Work on a project that has a real-world consequence
Build a prototype that you can showcase to potential employers, friends and family
Work closely with mentors from varied fields who will help you design and develop the immersive experience
Start from a problem, go through an entire VR development life cycle
What you build will be part of research experiments in the future

6. What will you do as part of this course?
Be introduced to Virtual Reality
Design skills – Learn how to effectively frame and design immersive experiences that communicate messages focused on social change
Development skills - Learn how to use Unity 3D to build immersive, interactive experiences
Hear from five different mentor groups about challenges in their domain
Design a VR-based solution to one of the mentor-identified challenges
Build the designed prototype in VR
Showcase the built prototype at the end of the semester

7. What will you NOT do as part of this course?
Not only develop – you will work through the entire design-develop- disseminate cycle of an immersive VR experience
Work on a project/game of your own
This class is not a collection of tutorials
Learning Vs Teaching
Focus on one aspect of the immersive experience alone. The goal is to get a comprehensive view of VR design and development

8. Resources Website: https://gatorvrse.wordpress.com/ Syllabus
Course policies and guidelines

9. Class Structure
Tuesday (1 hour) – Instructional lecture on different VR components, tools and devices
Due before class on Thursday – Writeup on how to incorporate the said component into your immersive experience
Thursday in-class – Present progress and future work. Feedback will be provided about progress and future work
Work on building in the component into the immersive experience

10. Tentative Course Topics
Introduction to virtual reality
Introduction to building immersive experiences (and Unity 3D)
Project topic and mentor introductions
Designing immersive experiences
Framing effective communication messages - Dr. Sri Kalyanaraman
Fundamentals of experimental research - Dr. Sri Kalyanaraman
Operationalization of Social Good - Dr. Sri Kalyanaraman
Designing impactful immersive experiences

11. Tentative Course Topics
Components of immersive, interactive and impactful experiences
Introduction to Unity development environment
3D Assets - creation and use
Source Control & Collaboration in Unity
Scripts & Interactivity
Animations
Sound
Shaders, Texturing & Modeling
Physics Engine
Deployment platforms - Oculus, GearVR, Vive, Cardboard etc.
Performance Enhancement
Intros & Outros

12. In-class Activity What is Virtual Reality? What is unique about VR?
Why do we need VR?
Give me one application (that is not currently implemented or available) for VR?

13. Comments/ Questions?
Shiva Halan
Office Hours : Wed 3 – 4 pm