Open AccessVirtual Reality as a Proxy for Participant Observation in Introduction to Socio-Cultural Anthropology
Author(s) -
John Dulin
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
teaching anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2053-9843
DOI - 10.22582/ta.v11i2.636
Subject(s) - virtual reality , cultural anthropology , anthropology , visual anthropology , sociology , class (philosophy) , quality (philosophy) , proxy (statistics) , ethnography , computer science , human–computer interaction , epistemology , philosophy , artificial intelligence , machine learning
This article details the piloting of a virtual reality activity in an introductory anthropology class at Utah Valley University. Anthropologists have only recently started exploring how VR technology can facilitate classroom learning. As Elzen (2018) writes, VR allows “students to immerse themselves much more than passively watching a video.” It is this immersive quality of the medium that makes it particularly useful for anthropological pedagogy.