There’s always something in the air these days. Here in Colorado, it was just another smoky day, the hazy high-altitude air filled with particulates from the many forest fires actively burning in our mountains. Online, however, the VR/AR Association (VRARA) education committee, chaired by Carlos Ochoa in Madrid, met this week to ‘air’ some insightful perspectives about “VR/AR in Education Now”, all while emphasizing our current covid-19 circumstances.
The participants were an interesting mix of startup CEOs, designers, managers of giant players in the VR/AR marketplace, a few consultants, and only three actual ‘educators’. The result was an interesting potpourri of ideas focusing on this key question: “What’s happening in education nowadays in the VR/AR world?” Below is an overall sampling of the fresh thinking that emerged from this entirely education-focused session.
Wonderments
- Forget about generation Z. What do we need to know about post-covid generations and how will their new perspectives impact the VR/AR industry over time?
- How can we better manage VR/AR resources in classrooms and training rooms? (More on that will be coming in a future article.)
- How do we measure engagement with VR/AR? What kind of success metrics make the most sense for VR/AR?
- How do we ever impact the curriculum in the teacher’s room with the learning potential of VR/AR? (Note: There is huge a difference between the written curriculum identified by the school or department and the actual taught curriculum that goes on in the classroom once the teacher shuts the door.)
- When will we ever have a workable educational commons for housing digital content?
Headaches/Anxieties
- Equity of access to VR/AR equipment, the Internet, and sufficient bandwidth is a challenge confronting educators everywhere. (Note: inequity “hinders VR becoming mandatory, because if only one student doesn’t have it, the teacher will not use it at all”.)
- Covid-aware hygiene in shared VR/AR contexts is a growing a concern for educators. (I’ll tackle more on that topic in a future article, as well.)
- An enlightened educator from Ireland folded a full range of concerns into one concise list: the cost of hardware; fear by educators of investing too early in this nascent technology; a paucity of available content; a lack of pedagogy underpinning the content: the steep time and labor costs of internally developing content; validity of the learning experience; accessibility; inclusivity; and not least, ethical use.
Selling to Schools
- Most VRARA education committee members agreed: it’s hard, if not impossible, to get VR into schools during this messy pandemic.
- Many of the meeting attendees feel like “wedding party crashers” when trying to promote VR/AR in schools and universities, due to the impact of COVID-19. “The response always seems to be negative; there’s just no time to see [us]”.
- One developer disagreed, arguing that her company is experiencing “explosive interest” in VR/AR, with “many new customers interested finding out how to do things in entirely new ways”. […the resultant group disbelief was palpable]
Good Vibrations
- One speaker said the way to push VR/AR in education during a pandemic is to “focus on things you can’t do in a normal classroom”.
- Another speaker revealed a positive reaction in adoption cycles inside India to VR/AR, emerging from a “large academic push” for VR/AR in the country.
- Yet another speaker suggested that the correct tack to pursue was to push the research. For example, research has shown that immersive tech can help reduce cognitive load in learning, reducing significantly the “amount of cognitive pressure students will experience when engaging with content”. [Ahh, another topic I am unpacking for a future article. Stay tuned.]
- If you want to see VR/AR done right in education, take a look at some successful companies, like Curiious or the medically focused EducationXR.
My Own Thoughts
Wait for it…wait for it…we at last come to some of my own thoughts about VR/AR in the context of the Covidian Age. While I am intrigued or delighted with the items listed in the Good Vibrations section above, I remain somewhat skeptical of many companies currently chasing VR/AR market share in the education marketplace.
First, many folks in this industry lack their basic footing– everyone seems to have a solution in search of a problem to solve—instead of the other way around. Second, except the august speaker from Ireland mentioned above, many VR/AR industry folks are out of touch with the educational enterprise. I can tell by listening to them that they simply don’t understand their customers. I am one [of their customers], and I can clearly see that they understand us poorly—their heads are in their own technology clouds—and they cannot see or feel our “pain points” or priorities. And third (using a popular culturematic in play these days), you simply won’t convince us with “Captain Obvious” posturing about the oft-repeated benefits of VR/AR in retention, engagement, or wow factor in learning. –Len Scrogan
