Featured Cases From the Fields of Education and Employee Training
While the entertainment sector of the VR market has had its disappointments, many educational institutions and businesses are seeing its potential to improve instruction. Below are current examples of how VR is deployed to improve learning for those stakeholders.
VR at High School
Palmer High School teacher Sean Wybrant is one innovative educator who incorporates VR into his classroom as one of many options to teach students
skills that meet both curricular and life goals.
According to Wybrant, “Innovation in the classroom has to occur for our students to understand the value of risk taking and determination and grit.” At the same time, Wybrant has remarked on obstacles to implementing VR as an innovative technology, significantly access to equipment and funding. He has also challenged educators not to dismiss new technology too quickly if it does not immediately serve one’s purposes, as many technologies were not originally designed for an educational context. But with the efforts of innovators--both educators and learners--who are collaborating to identify needs and adapt technology to become that relative advantage required for critical adoption, VR has the potential to reach deeply and effectively into educational contexts in order to transform student learning.
One of the biggest concerns about implementing VR as an educational tool is cost. Google Cardboard is an inexpensive option for many schools. However, there is more to consider than purchasing headsets when providing the best, most seamless experience possible (Harbridge, 2017). Sean is at the forefront of teaching extended reality (XR) development. We discussed the costs of launching and maintaining his pedagogical approach during a visit in April 2019.
When done well, virtual reality can provide a shared, immersive, otherworldly educational experience like Field Trip to Mars. VR technology transforms students from passive observers to active participants; they can travel, risk-free, to locations around the world or impossible places like the subatomic world, or it can allow them to experience a historical event. (“Reality Bytes,” 2017)
Students studying the Salem Witch Trials in a history class at Sean’s school asked his class to create a virtual reality environment of a witch trial courtroom. This year, a group of his students is traveling to Saipan, the largest of the Mariana Islands, to work in collaboration with students there to create a virtual museum of World War II battle sites. Four of the students were practicing their pitch for a local community event the evening of my visit.
The (“Reality Bytes,” 2017) article concludes with the acknowledgment that,
“…as with all education technology, it must be successfully integrated into the educational curriculum, acting as a tool and enhancement, not as a replacement. VR immersion can demonstrate material covered by a traditional lecture. A teacher can also moderate a VR lesson and launch different modules when necessary, or even become part of the virtual environment by customizing an avatar and participating directly in the process. Together, students can listen to the teacher, collaborate, and even perform group tasks using VR social features. Virtual interactions such as these could unlock a very real world of opportunity for students and teachers alike.”
HTC Vive image Credit Temple of Mara PB Meta 2 Image Credit MetaMarket [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]
VR in Higher Education
The University of Buffalo created an innovative VR solution to a teacher training problem that demonstrates the promise of molding the technology to meet particular learning outcomes in a transformative way. UB’s “flight simulator for teachers” directly responds to a call from the State University of New York Chancellor’s call for “on-campus laboratories where students can simulate being in a classroom.” Through the program, student teachers can experience and practice responding to real situations of K-12 student behavior problems. Because the simulation employs VR technology, learners engage with responsive characters and scenarios before they even enter a classroom student teacher situation. And because of the transformative VR experience, student teachers have a stronger claim to clinical experience and practiced skill set once they do enter the classroom environment.
From Linkedin's 2018 Workplace Learning Report
Employee Development
In Q4 2018 Walmart made a major investment in VR training for its roughly one million employees. The retailer purchased 17,000 Oculus Go headsets to be deployed at 5,000 locations for this purpose. Walmart sought to solve several problems associated with a large and dispersed workforce. They desired consistency in training, which Linkedin found to be the second-most important area of focus among talent developers in 2018. (Number one was developing “soft skills,”
discussed below.) In a company press release, Aaron Kimbrough, then Sr. Manager II, Digital Operations at Walmart, stated he also wanted to reduce the commitment in logistics and manpower to training face-to-face. Along with customer-facing skills, areas of focus include new technology and compliance.
How it works at Walmart
Employees check out a VR unit from a locker at their work site, complete learning modules and re-dock them. One module offers training on how to handle the high volume of shoppers on black Friday. Once re-docked, the headsets recharge and upload completion statistics to a reporting
database. The scenarios used in simulation are “difficult, or otherwise-impossible” to duplicate in reality, claims Oculus’ Andy Mathis. Based on pilot studies, Kimbrough anticipates improved performance metrics and reduced time spent on training away from the floor. A company statement also touts the value of experiential learning, repeatability, and scalability.
Soft Skills
Corporate stakeholders like Walmart view the development of "soft skills," like social intelligence, as the most important training outcome for their employees today. Many are turning to VR.
Learning Empathy from a Computer
Talespin promotional image.
VR companies are responding to the demand for better interpersonal skills among employees. Kyt Dotson of SiliconANGLE reports that, Talespin LLC has developed 'Virtual Human' technology. "The objective is to use these technologies to allow the virtual character to present a lifelike 'dummy' for the employee to practice on with enough emotional realism that it can stand in for a human trainer. Talespin claims that this sort of platform will act as a stand-in for communications training that is commonly absent in other training systems or role play."
Talespin promotional video.
Driven by behind-the-scenes artificial intelligence, "Barry" (above right) is about to be fired, over and over as a human resources trainee practices the soft skill of empathy. Click the image to learn more.
Workforce Ramifications
A 2016 study by Dell & Intel indicates that millenials look with greater-than-average disfavor on work environments with sub-standard technology. 44% of employees worldwide felt that their work space isn’t "smart" enough, while more than half (57%) expected to be working in a smart office by 2021. Employees also perceive training as the most exciting application of VR in the workplace. To the extent that employers continue to implement emerging technologies like VR, job candidates may be less prepared than their peers for the workplace if they are not proficient with ‘smart’ technology like VR. Therefore Innovators like Mr. Wybrant can serve not only the contemporaneous academic needs of their students but also provide the ancillary benefit of a competitive edge in an evolving labor market.