Immersive Learning Experiences Bring Lehigh Valley History to Life
Jun. 2, 2025
A team of Lehigh faculty, students and community partners have developed a series of six immersive learning experiences that teach students about the environmental and industrial history of the Lehigh Valley.
The VR games are part of a curriculum bank hosted at eli.lehigh.edu that offers lesson plans and resources for using geospatial data to explore topics like tectonics, climate change and land use.
Development for these VR games started in 2018. The faculty team included Lehigh educator professors Alec Bodzin, Tom Hammond and Zilong Pan as well as environmental science professor Dave Anastasio.
Student developers include recipients of the Lehigh Valley Social Impact Fellowship through the university’s Office of Creative Inquiry and education students completing a certificate in game-based learning.
“It’s most important to get kids outside in nature doing hands-on, inquiry-based learning,” Bodzin said.
But when schools don’t have money for field trips, aren’t located near a body of water or have no safe way to access nearby water, VR can be the “next best thing,” Bodzin said.
Read the full story on the Morning Call website at https://bit.ly/4mMCUM4.
