Original post from the Dean’s Office, April 20, 2023
By Megan Cole
Starting this spring, UCI language students will be able to wander through the streets of Vietnam, practice Tagalog in the Philippines, explore the Arabic-speaking world and more — all from the comfort of a small, unassuming classroom in the Humanities Instructional Building.
UCI’s Program in Global Languages & Communication (GLC) will soon launch the Intercultural Communications Lab, a virtual-reality-enabled classroom wherein students can don headsets to “travel” anywhere in the world. The lab’s cutting-edge software will enable users to virtually navigate foreign cities, converse with native speakers and experience total linguistic and cultural immersion without the costs of studying abroad.
Initially, the lab was conceptualized as a response to the “uncertainty” of COVID-19, according to English Professor and GLC Director Jerry Won Lee. When the pandemic broke out, Lee was working on a book about Korean language and culture in global contexts. He soon realized how difficult it was to conduct internationally focused research without the ability to travel.
“The pandemic disrupted traditional scholarship and learning on every level, and made everyone think more creatively and intentionally about technology,” says Lee. “As academics and as language instructors, my colleagues and I began to wonder: If we can’t travel and convene in person, how do we get students interested in language-learning? If we can’t take our classes on actual field trips to practice reading and interacting in different languages, can we construct a more feasible version of that? We realized that virtual reality is the next best thing.”
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To read more, see “VR voyages” by UCI School of Humanities.