Higher Education Classroom of the Future: an EU-Funded Project Integrating Physical Lectures, Virtual Reality, and Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) opens up bright perspectives for education. AI is capable of delivering a personalized learning experience through, e.g., deep learning, natural language processing, and adaptive learning. An AI-driven learning system can help students suggesting adaptive learning paths to attain learning goals, predict student performance, and recommend ways to improve. The combination of AI and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies can push the limits even further, thanks to their immersive nature, ability to offer virtual experiences on systems/environments not directly accessible by students, and potential to mitigate cost, or equipment barriers. AI can control and adapt VR to offer personalised experiences and analytics that provide profound insights into learning and behaviour. The Higher Education Classroom Of the Future (HECOF) project aims to build a pedagogical model that integrates VR and AI for simulation-based learning. Through a co-design approach involving students, the project seeks to increase motivation and engagement. The HECOF system adapts to individual needs detected by AI algorithms providing support and educational measures that respond to adaptive education models. The framework of the system includes: • Theoretical lectures that integrate specifically designed learning loops for an optimized student experience. • A VR-based immersive learning environment, available for synchronous and asynchronous access. It offers a problem-based laboratory activity on a bioreactor. The learners manage multiple process parameters to achieve specific goals, and experience real-time system changes simulating a process taking weeks in a real life environment. • An online AI companion that tracks the learners' performance, generates evaluation quizzes based on the contents of the lecture, adapts to their individual needs, and enables collaborative learning by sharing notes and comments. The HECOF system is expected to increase motivation and engagement among students. It fosters self-directed, self-disciplined, and self-monitored thinking skills, as well as improved communication and problem-solving abilities.