Facebook’s parent company Meta has equipped seven universities with VR headsets to help them transition to virtual learning.

The seven universities and colleges will open digital twins of their campuses to provide an alternative to class via video call. A digital twin is a virtual representation that serves as a real-time digital counterpart to a physical object or process.

Each school will roll out a digital twin of campus for students to attend either on campus or remotely. Based on the provision from Meta, each student will receive a Meta Quest 2 virtual reality headset that can be used during the course.

Beneficiaries include a nursing school, an HBCU, four land grant schools and a global campus plan to open digital twins of existing campuses in the fall of 2022.

The names of the universities are Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA; University of Kansas School of Nursing, Kansas City, KS; New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM; South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD; West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV; University of Maryland Global Campus, Adelphi, MD; and Southwestern Oregon Community College, Coss Bay, OR.

The sources for this piece include an article in TechRepublic.