Lamar State College Port Arthur, Lamar Institute of Technology, and Lamar State College Orange brought in AlensiaXR to host a special presentation of upcoming mixed reality and augmented reality technology coming to these campuses later this year. 

The presentation sought to teach faculty, staff and students about the new equipment along with some new programs that set out to expand how students learn about the human body. 

Augmented reality is when a device like a phone or tablet is used to project virtual elements for the students to see and interact with. 

Mixed reality mixes the real world with elements of virtual elements to allow students to collaborate in real-time with things like virtual human skeletons or other organic systems to learn from a visual perspective rather than an image in a textbook.

Those in higher education hope that this technology will help the incoming students as they are more in tune with technology. 

“The generation that are coming into school right now, there’re younger generations and they are technology experts,” said Lauren Ratcliff, Lab and Simulation coordinator for Lamar State College Port Arthur “They want technology and they want to use technology, so this kind of stuff to them is like their go to, they grew up with technology.”

The money for the equipment came from a grant from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board for the past year where each campus received over $250,000.

AlensiaXR hopes to have this technology fully incorporated into the classrooms by August of this year.

“All three of our campuses are striving to stay on top of technology and doing what we can to educate our students,” said Ratcliff.