ORU opens Global Learning Center for students all over the world

TULSA, Okla. (KTUL) -- Reading out of a textbook for school can be boring but imagine getting to interact with what you are reading about.

You are sitting in class learning about space shuttles but all you can see is a picture of the shuttle in a textbook. Student, Shawn Madison is looking at it on his phone as if it were sitting on his own desk.

"I have taken several medical classes and I have gotten to really understand different components," Madison said. "Getting to be more hands on is really exciting to me."

The more than 50,000 square-foot remodel brought Oral Roberts University smart classrooms, virtual and augmented reality, robotics and global interaction.

"I think this is the perfect start to expand around the world," Madison said.

Classrooms are designed to give the approximately 400 students learning from different countries the same experience as ORU students.

"The content that you are seeing on the screen that the students are seeing, also the students online are also seeing the same material," Senior Director of Information Technologies Peter Kovaleski said.

Even if they are somewhere in Australia.

"The content we have in this room is being recorded right now," Kovaleski said. "So if they aren't able to join this class live then they will be able to login to their D2L program and then be able to watch what was recorded in the previous time in their own time zone."

The Global Learning Center will help educate students who may not be able to get a Visa into the United States or can't afford to leave their country.

"They can join the online class, get their education and being able to do that without having to actually attend the campus like a normal student would at the university," Kovaleski said.

The Vision statement at ORU says in part to go out to places that don't have the same knowledge and teach them. This new building will provide that.