SCC one of six institutions selected for a $4,000,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF)
Published on Dec 15, 2023
Somerset Community College (SCC) was recently selected by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as one of six institutions nationwide for the Resource Collaborative for Immersive Technologies (RECITE) initiative. This three-year project, funded through NSF’s Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program, will support community college technical educators as they integrate cutting-edge Extended Reality (XR) technologies, such as Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), into the classroom.
A striking gap has been identified in the research and application of XR technologies in technician education in the United States. RECITE was created to address the critical needs of the modern educational framework, targeting the enhancement of XR technology adoption within two-year colleges. St. Cloud State University, NSF ATE Center CA2VES, Somerset Community College, NSF ATE Center EARTh, Motlow State Community College and CAST are the six institutions collaborating on the RECITE project to address this gap in adopting immersive educational technology.
Through the RECITE initiative, SCC and its partners will explore the current landscape of XR in education, develop comprehensive professional XR training programs, and introduce an XR-centric website and product repository to support technician education. SCC specifically will be leading the creation and distribution of the training programs, while also researching new XR applications.
The outcome of the RECITE project’s work will be to make XR resources openly available
to educators. This will allow colleges to build collaborative relationships and increase
their access to XR content and technology to enhance their student’s educational experiences.
SCC’s Pre-engineering Professor and Director of Kentucky’s Additive Manufacturing
Program, Eric Wooldridge, is serving as one of the supporting Principal Investigators
(Co-PI) for the RECITE project at SCC.
According to Wooldridge, “VR and XR technologies can be the ‘Great Cost Equalizer’ when it comes to education. Using VR headsets that are equivalent in cost to a couple of college textbooks, we can realistically simulate equipment and experiences that are often cost and/or time-prohibitive. A great example is high-priced CNC systems or clean room labs necessary for semiconductor fabrication. The majority of US schools have no chance of educating students in these technologies because they can’t afford, let alone maintain, the equipment. However, these same schools can instead use off-the-shelf VR headsets and XR technology to learn 60-70% of the skills needed to be successful.
SCC President Dr. Carey Castle remarks, “Somerset Community College is honored to be selected by the National Science Foundation for the RECITE initiative. This collaborative effort reflects our commitment to enhancing education through cutting-edge technologies.”
SCC has been working with VR technologies since 2016 and was funded by the NSF in 2021 to make creating new content with the technology practical for students and educators. Through RECITE, SCC is looking forward to building on its past success with these applications, making low-cost VR and XR technologies available to colleges and institutions across the nation.
