IRVINE, CA, March 31, 2022 – EON Reality, the global leader in Augmented and Virtual Reality-based knowledge and skills transfer for industry and education, establishes a new XR Center for Higher Education with Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania (UBB).
The COVID-19 pandemic radically altered the lives of everyone around the world, but students were one of the major groups adversely affected by the many necessary health precautions recommended by the World Health Organization. According to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, roughly 1.6 billion school and college students had their studies interrupted at the peak of the pandemic. Fortunately, universities like Romania’s Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca (UBB) quickly moved to address the challenges of remote learning.
During the 2021-2022 academic year, UBB implemented many new technologies and partnered with EON Reality to create the UBB-EON-XR Center for Higher Education. The largest center of its kind both in Romania and neighboring countries, it will introduce new academic standards based on a new university pedagogy rooted in virtual, augmented and mixed reality. The center will also focus on research, development, and innovation (RDI) that will help generate innovative products and services for society. Additionally, the UBB-EON-XR Center for Higher Education is collaborating and coordinating with the new Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, and Robotics at UBB and the already renowned Matrix Platform of the Institute for Advanced Studies of Psychotherapy and Applied Mental Health.
As this period of pandemic-induced uncertainty continues, schools must increase their efforts to digitize education and move into an era that promotes flexibility, adaptive and personalized learning. Aging infrastructure and the lack of proper pedagogical training for digital classrooms were among the many problems that continued to hinder learning and progress.
Knowing that many students and teachers around the world have struggled with adapting to unfamiliar technology necessary for remote learning, UBB enrolled approximately 500 staff members in training modules organized by EON Reality. The modules emphasized implementing virtual, augmented, and mixed reality into the teaching process. The university’s new emphasis on combining innovative education with advanced technologies will move UBB students into a new academic age.
“The last two years have forced everyone to learn and pivot, but perhaps no one has dealt with greater adaptive challenges than students and teachers. EON Reality wants to ensure that no student or professor gets left behind,” says Dan Lejerskar, Founder of EON Reality. “We are delighted to partner with UBB to create the UBB-EON-XR Center for Higher Education, which will enable everyone to return to their classrooms and prevent generational losses in education that could affect the world far more than these last two years. If more universities follow in UBB’s footsteps, the academic world will flourish despite any obstacle.”