Virtual Environment for Creative and Collaborative Learning

Abstract

New guidelines for Russian technical universities and creative industries require competitive professionals and as a result we are urged to apply novel educational methods to make their training efficient. This tendency calls for new tools to be adopted and implemented in the learning purposes. Russian modern curriculum is based on three levels of desirable exit qualifications students need to develop—Hard Skills, Soft Skills and Professional competencies in a specialized field. Novel not only in content but also in form Elective courses in Scientific Visualization, and Virtual Reality of Double Degree Master’s Program in Computational Science (ITMO University, Russian Federation and University of Amsterdam (UvA), The Netherlands) incorporate 3D anatomical atlas of human body, which became a prototype for the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). In this paper, we describe VLE architecture and our experience of its introduction to the master program courses and master theses preparation. We use our flexible VLE to acquire knowledge, develop collaborative skills, and monitor knowledge acquisition within the same unified environment using varied methods.