The Unity VR Project
Team (H)eadspace - Members
- Ryan Giles : Project Manager & Developer
- Matthew Patterson: Designer & Developer
- Zachary Williams: Developer
- Stephen Lefkowitz: Designer
Problem Statement
Students often do not learn information taught in class and do not retain what they do learn for long. This is partly due to the way that teachers will dump information on students in a one-way stream and simply expect them to memorize it. The American education system is especially bad, as it is geared toward students memorizing things for standardized tests and then never using that information again. Some solutions for this have been to make more project-based classes, which does improve retention rate. Even in those cases, the way the information is actually taught does not change much. How can we use VR to actively engage students and promote internalized knowledge?
Target Demographic
We believe that students between the ages of 12-19 struggle the most with finding the "fun" in learning. Our goal is to find a way for students to engage and challenge themselves with age-appropriate topics in a fun way using the three-dimensional VR space.
"Age-appropriate topics" for our purposes is defined as key concepts that would be or are already introduced in the classroom for a student at that age level. A College student wouldn't be introduced to foundational physics or Algebra I concepts, much like a high school student (age 13-14) wouldn't be introduced to discrete structure concepts.
Team Policies & Info
Communication Policy
- We will be using Discord as our primary platform for communication. Problems, questions, concerns, and likewise will be posted in the #team-h channel in the COS-420 and NMD-442 combined server.
- It is expected of all developers that they should reply to a question or ping within discord as soon as possible. Notifications for the channel should be turned on and accessible from both a computer and a mobile device of some kind.
- The use of the @everyone ping should be limited as that also alerts administators in the COS-420/NMD-442 server. The use of the @TeamH ping or individual pings (e.g. @Ryan G.) is preferred.
- When someone has a question, it should be directed to the team member who is most likely able to help first (e.g. if there is a problem with the repository, the project manager should be alerted). If that person does not respond within 30 minutes to an hour, another team member who is able to help should jump in and assist.
Meetings & Synchronized Work Schedule
- All meetings are scheduled on the Google Calendar:
- Sprint Head Meeting, Sundays @ 2-3pm
- Syncrhonous Work Blocks, Monday/Wednesday @ 12:30-1pm (Flexible as needed by team members)
- Sprint Stand Ups, Tuesday/Thursday @ 12pm. Team members are expected to respond to the Discord thread within 2-3 hours so the conversation can be started
- Sprint Tie-Up & Retorspective, Friday @ 2-3pm
- Meeting Agendas will be available in Google Drive at least 24 hours before the meeting.
Setting Up the Project
Accessing the Repository
- Team Members should clone this GitHub repository onto their personal machines using their @maine.edu emails (I believe you can't access this page without using your student email currently, so that shouldn't be much of a problem!). Make sure the repository is cloned into an easily accessible location.
Task Board
- We will be using GitHub's built in Agile and Gantt Board system. Select the "Projects" tab at the top of this page, and select "Team-H: The Unity VR Project" to view the task board.
Engine Set-up
- We are using Unity Engine to develop this project. First, team members should install Unity Hub from the Unity website. (https://unity.com/unity-hub)
- Installing the Unity Editor
- Once Unity Hub is installed, open it and ensure you are logged in to your Unity account.
- Navigate to the "Installs" Tab using the menu on the left column.
- Select the blue "Install Editor" button in the top right corner.
- Find the editor version 2022.3.10f1 (LTS) and select Install.
- Accessing the Project
- Once the editor is installed, navigate back to the "Projects" Tab using the menu on the left column.
- Select "Open".
- Navigate to your cloned repository location and select "The Unity VR Project" folder and click "Open"
- Unity Hub will automatically open the project using the installed editor version.
- Note: Do not attempt to open the project using a different version of the Unity Editor! This will cause unwanted errors as settings, features, and script language is handled differently version to version.
Project Build
- Starting in Deliverable 4, a build will be pushed to the repository for the end of every Sprint. This is to demonstrate our progress in a compiled format as opposed to digging through the Unity Editor.
- It should be noted that the build will likely be compiled for a VR rig, meaning a user without VR Hardware will be unable to use the build.
- Because of this, the build is mostly for us to look at and say "Hey, we did that!" as encouragement. Also so we can see a completed product.
Important Project Links