Virtual and Immersed Global Experience - The Service Oriented Field Experience (SOFE)

The Service Oriented Field Experience (SOFE) is a three-credit capstone course within the master of nonprofit program. We bring students to learn from and experience different cultures and work contexts. We have run this class for over 20 years with travel to many parts of Latin America and Africa. Due to COVID and general uncertainties in the journey, we have paused this class for the last three years. We expect to resume the course in the summer of 2023.

With the Instructional Design and Technology department, we are exploring the possibility of making this both an experiential and a VR-immersive course. To do this well, we need to bring a videographer and a photographer to Uganda and Rwanda next summer to document/record the class in action. We would also need to pay the way for the instructor to manage the class and the recording process.

This would give students who cannot travel an opportunity to take the class from the US using augmented reality-type technology. The IDT team is excited because this would be the first course of its kind. We also see possibilities for offering this as a standalone course for revenue purposes to support further experiential studies.