VITAL Summer Camp 2018

The theme for the 2018 VITAL Summer Camp was “Be Smart. Don’t Fall”. The camp was organized at the Moss and Associates Built Environment Informatics Lab in collaboration with Dr. Mario Eraso, STEM Coordinator at the School of Computing and Information Sciences. Sudip Subedi, PhD student at Moss School of Construction, Infrastructure and Sustainability led the instruction.

The format of the class was similar to previous summer camps where the students learned about the basic concepts of coding and virtual reality in the first week and were exposed to a project-based learning environment in the second week.

Since the theme was “Be Smart. Don’t Fall”, the students were supposed to produce an interactive game that teaches the players about fall hazards in day-to-day life and how to prevent a fall. The students were free to choose the scenario for their projects. Besides promoting public and occupational safety among youngsters, the camp was designed to teach computer programming, 3D modelling and creating animations to the students.

Below are sample projects created by the students with different scenarios. The video shows one instance of the game. In the actual game, the players move their characters and when the characters avoid/get into hazards, text appears on the screen with lessons on how to improve their performance.

A game involving Ashley and her best friend in which Ashley gives her best friend several tasks and then teaches her about the potential hazards while performing the tasks. The players perform the tasks and at the end are given information on the things that they should have considered while performing the tasks.

Soldiers try to escape a foreign planet but there are hurdles that they need to overcome. The soldiers might fall into a very deep pit if they are not careful.