VR Classroom

1.We're committed to solve interactivity between teachers and students in digital-spaces. Many teachers are struggling with e-learning platforms and students can't teamwork easily because of limitations.

2.We're working on a VR classroom to simulate a real classroom (that teachers already know how to use), but giving them new tools to improve their classes and interaction with their students.

3.Our solution can change lives now in pandemic times, but also can help teachers and students in the post-pandemic future, teachers and students will be interacting in a digital-space not limited to VR-headsets, but opened to desktop and cellphone users, what makes our solution cheaper to implement and useful to different learning environments. One more thing, our solution helps professors and students that aren't familiar with technology, because the interactivity inside the VR Classroom is similar to real one, which makes it easier to use.

Right now, teachers and students are frustrated at least in latinamerican countries, but as far as we know in development countries happens too. This is because e-learning platforms wasn't ready to replace the real classroom. In Colombia, according with the "Universidad Nacional", the rate of happiness of parents that have their children in e-learning because of the pandemic is under 33% in the hole country. 

Those parents where used to send their children to school, but right now the level of education has extremely decreased because of homeschooling. The tools offered to users aren't friendly with their way of teaching a studying classes, that's why is important to build an environment that is visually similar to the physical classroom but enhance by digital tools.

Institutes have seen that digital tools can be used to improve tracking of information, but appropriation is one of the main problems. People were waiting for a vaccine a the end of 2020, in the same study, almost 60% of parents wanted the development of vaccines in order to put it on their Childs and return to the old system. But that doesn't solve the problem if a pandemic returns or if digital teaching is needed.

Our solution is to create a Virtual Reality (VR) Classroom, to access our development students could login through different platforms such as cellphone, desktop or VR-headsets. The teacher can login preferably through VR headset, even with other devices can be use. 

The VR classroom allows teachers and students to interact in a virtual space that to the user's eye is exactly to a real classroom, the difference is the way they get there, and the extra things that they can do in virtual spaces. 

This VR classroom is being developed in Unity, we have been working for about a year, and we like to work with this tool because is compatible with android, IOs, desktop, Oculus, and many more. 

We are using Oculus headsets to develop and test the system, Unity to see the progress and track the versions, Visual studio to code scripts in C#, between other tools. 

We create a Virtual Reality (VR) Classroom where students can login through different platforms such as cellphone, desktop or VR-headsets. The teacher can login preferably through VR headset, or even with other devices. 

The scenario is a virtual classroom that will be seen as the regular classroom, teachers will be able to write with a marker, project slides and videos, and more... besides regular items, they will be in control of students volume of speaking, they will be able to give activities to their students and make them work in teams, and also, they will have control of the environment according with the theme, this will let the teacher, for instance, to change the scenario from a regular classroom to a beautiful farm to teach biology.

The activities that the students do will be interactive, and will be like a game, this will be fun and didactic, encouraging students to learn while they are playing. This is the most important thing, we want that students learn because is fun. 

Last but no least, Institutes will be able to track information of performance, to have information and improve decision making. 

We have been working directly with students and professors to understand their daily routine, but also with administration to look for indicators and information that is needed to be collected. And as far as we have worked, our first beta was accepted by everyone, our sample is local but it demonstrate that this kind of tool is has great acceptance, because is similar to real life. Besides the devices or digital extras, everything feels similar and is well known by teachers and students.

This solution addresses not to one but all the dimensions to the "equitable classrooms" challenge, because it's a help to teachers who don't have much technological background to feel safe in an environment that's almost exactly of what they have been working.

Students will learn with more interactive and game focused content, besides of having new ways of interacting with classmates without thinking in terms of race, gender or size, they will be what they want to be. If any trouble is being reported, teachers or administrative personal will have the information instantly and will be able to take actions.

During a year we have been working on developing a prototype to be able to show people what our product is for, because when we tell people about it they think is a beautiful dream, and they didn't see that is a project that is working already. 

We choose prototype, because is functional in our infrastructure, but is not available for testing in a community. besides, there is a need of enhance some features, that is why we are trying to found new resources that help us accelerate some limitations we have right now, and make the first pilot with potential clients we have already.

We are doing a product that aims to solve virtual classes, today almost all products are giving services through video chats, virtual rooms or website platforms that goes against the user experience. 

We are sure that our VR Classroom would be a new level of doing classes even after the pandemic alert ends, students would be able to experience labs scenarios and interact with them. Maybe in first class countries this means nothing, but in Colombia in real classrooms, students don't have functional labs to understand concepts of physics, chemistry and so on, because schools can have the spaces dedicated to laboratories but don't have the tools to use them.

Teachers are used to their real classrooms, they know how to use markers, basic powerpoint presentations in PC, videos projectors and very physical tools. Even today, a year after the pandemic begun, there are many teachers that don't use correctly virtual tools because they don't know how to use them. The VR Classroom will be an interactive tool that will be similar to a real classroom, they will have an easier transition in using this new application, as we have seen in some socializations we had made. 

Currently our development is not available for users, right now we are in a prototyping stage.

In one year we want to release the first product to be used by users, we are working on partnerships with local schools and universities in Tunja. Right now there are near of 20.000 school students, and 35.000 students of university or technical institutes. We want to share at least a 5% of that market. With foreign partnerships we are working with a Mexican e-learning platform called Sofia that has almost 1.5 million users, they want to include our product with their clients, and they want to make a pilot with almost 1.000 students. 

In five years, we want to expand in Colombia were almost 4 million students with technological capabilities can use our product, we would like to have at least a 10% of that market in Colombia. In Mexico, we would like to expand to at least 50% of the market Sofia will have in Mexican schools.

Some of the main measures we want to have per indicator are:

Quality Education

• Coverage: Number of institutions that adopted our VR Classroom 
• Performance of students: performance of students in institutions that adopted our VR Classroom vs previous years.
• Acceptance: See how students and professors feel about using our VR Classroom.
• Increased in tasks made: Number of additional tasks made by students  and produced by content in VR Classes.

Gender Equality

• Performance in female students: Scores in test made by females vs previous years
• Performance in male students: Scores in test made by females vs previous years
• Inclusion in female students: Number of female students vs previous years
• Inclusion in male students: Number of male students vs previous years
• Acceptance of content by women: number of female students that relates with contents in classes
• Acceptance of content by men: number of male students that relates with contents in classes

Decent Work and Economic Growth

• Increase in teacher's salary: medium salary per teacher vs previous years
• Number of teachers hired: number of teachers hired vs previous years
• Acceptance of teachers: Number of teachers that adopt VR Classrooms as a complement or replace of current real-life classrooms Vs previous years

Reduced Inequality

• Reduce of bullying: Number of students bullied since adoption of our VR Classroom vs previous years.
• Increased of students confidence: Number of students with special conditions that feel more confident going to VR Classes.
• Inclusion of LGBTI/Black/indigenous/special students: Number of minority students vs previous years
• Acceptance of content by LGBTI/Black/indigenous/special students: number of minority students that relates with contents in classes
• Performance in LGBTI/Black/indigenous/special students: Scores in test made by minority students vs previous years

The project team is:

- Project manager: Joshep Borja, Industrial Engineer. (Full-time)

- Front-end developer: Ana Agudelo (part-time).

- Full-stack developer: Wilson Ochoa (part-time).

- Full-stack developer: Alexander Londoño (part-time).

- Data Base specialist: Kevin Borja (part-time).

- UX designer: Francy Camargo (part-time).

Our team is a complete set of professionals that work extra time to make this vision be a reality, everyone contributes from their field of knowledge and helps to make this project become true everyday: 

- Joshep Borja, as project manager with five years of experience in software development projects, helps coordinate the team efforts and to achieve projected goals. 

- Francy Camargo, as user experience designer with two years of experience in software development projects, helps us see and make mockups of how the VR Classroom should be.

- Ana Agudelo, as front-end developer with three years of experience in software developments, is a key factor to make the objects and components in the VR Classroom.

- Wilson Ochoa, as full-stack developer with two years of experience in development projects, helps to join back-end developments with front-end.

- Alexander Londoño, as full-stack developer with eight years of experience in software development projects, helps to develop back end solutions.

- Kevin Borja, as data base specialist, helps with the design and develop of data base infrastructure for the project.

VR LeveL is a company build on the basis that no one is better than other person, we respect and include all sort of ideas. As you can see in our team, we include women, and they take lead in how the project should be. 

Right now, we are bringing two more women to the team, because we want to have a vision of the VR Classroom that includes women's thoughts, we can't think for them, these two women are going to help us from the teacher's point of view to enhance how the VR Classroom works in their field.

In equity, we are not just a gender diverse group, but we are from different backgrounds, our team is not located in Tunja's City, four persons are located in Bogotá and Medellín, and you may don't know but cultures in Colombia are extremely different from one city to another. 

We would like to include more people, but as the project grows up we are sure that new points of view will be welcome, and that we will be glad of having more people around to work with. 

- We need to upgrade technology to have better tests with more actual tech.

- We want to have full-time development to accelerate production of software

- We need to be able to improve marketing, because right now we have some potential and important clients, but we need to expand are scope and have more opportunities

We would like to be partners with educational institutes, or with investors that want to be part of our team.

Right now in Colombia, you can see refugees from Venezuela that don't have opportunities of studying, our VR Classroom could be an option for them to find institutes that let them take classes, and certify them to be able to work in our country.

We are working in a VR Classroom that implements features of AI to track performance of the students, and give them guidance through the learning process.

We will give free licenses for children in social disadvantage. Venezuelan migration is making that people can't work due to lack of certified studies in other countries, we hope to help with that issue.  

We want to make licenses an memberships in our VR Classroom, it will be a great opportunity to include cryptocurrencies to digitalized even more our classroom.