How can you make the environmental impact of AI and data centers truly tangible for students?
In the third-year bachelor’s course Sustainable Marketing and Consumer Behavior, VR has been used in education on this scale for the first time. A total of 160 students stepped into a VR experience that allowed them to personally witness the environmental impact of AI use.
In the virtual environment, students carry out simple tasks at home and decide whether or not to use AI. They are then taken into a data center, where they see just how much water and energy are required to meet the growing demand for AI. They also witness how their own living environment changes as a result of the e-waste generated by the data center.
This project not only served an educational purpose, but also contributed to VR research. Using test and control groups, we examined how effective VR is in the learning process compared with a traditional reading assignment. We measured not only what students retained, but also whether the experience encourages more conscious and responsible AI use.
For this initiative, Professor Yvonne van Everdingen received a grant as part of the Sustainability in Education project from the Centre for Learning and Innovation. The insights gained will be shared with the wider EUR community.
Another special aspect of the project is that the VR experience, Outscourced, was developed by students from TU Delft in collaboration with Marie Kegeleers of the IX Lab at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Many thanks as well to the UpscaleXR team for their technical VR support throughout this educational initiative.
If you are a lecturer, researcher, or external professional interested in exploring a collaboration with our Immersive Xperience Lab, please contact Marie Kegeleers.