Virtual realities (VR) are computer-created environments in which people can interact with what has been programmed or, when linked to some kind of network or on-line access, with each other.
Typically, users wear some kind of headset or goggles to facilitate their sensory experience, which is primarily visual (sometimes fully 360°) and perhaps aural and/or tactile. Environments might be fictional or non-fictional, and interaction passive or active (Moreno & Mayer, 2007).
Although we might consider any back-and-forth communication between two or more people as inter-activity, only a meaningful connection that helps one or more than one of them learn something is interactive learning (Moreno & Mayer, 2007). Moreno and Mayer (2007) are careful to clarify further that interactivity does not “cause” but rather helps “promote” learning (p. 321) although perhaps their conclusion does not fully account for the effects of the hidden curriculum.
Therefore, when planning lessons, teachers should avoid the temptation to try VR for its own sake, which can produce a more gimmicky effect. Instead, they might consider exactly how interactive learning can help enrich their students’ experiences, not only by appealing directly to students’ senses but by directly confronting their capabilities: “… students’ areas of expertise can become the ‘real’ of real-world applications, and students’ knowledge can successively alter curricular outcomes” (Schneider et al., 2014, p. 562).
Create, Make, Innovate: Getting Hands-on with Learning Design
Recap of the session held in the Scarfe Foyer Fall 2019:
At this week’s Create, Make, Innovate! activity session, on Tuesday, November 19th, 2019, teacher candidates had the chance to learn about creating VR experiences for the classroom using Google Tour Creator.
“Today’s media-savvy students compose and read texts that include alphabetic- and character-based print, still images, video, and sound. They listen to podcasts, watch animations on the Internet, film their own videos, and compose visual arguments on paper and online. These rich, multilayered texts demand multimodal literacy skills of their readers, who must navigate the different, intersecting media.” (Gardner, 2007, p. 93)
Cardboard Goggles (Image by WikimediaImages from Pixabay)
Google offers a suite of VR apps, branded as Google Cardboard on account of the homemade goggles that you can make yourself. While the goggles are novel and can be fun to try on, they are not necessary in order to use the apps, which range from the amusing to the cinematic.
The Education Library in Scarfe has several sets of goggles available for loan. However, if you do take on making some goggles, as an initial project, they can actually lend a more cozy feel to watching later on since those goggles are thanks to your own hard work!
Resources
Check out the Scarfe Digital Sandbox for other interactive VR apps, such as Discovery VR, and also Merge Cube, which is an Augmented Reality (AR) tool.
“The virtual worlds we have designed have strong visual elements that are historically and culturally related to specific literary texts…. They can incorporate sound and video files to create museum and role-play environments.” (Arver, 2007, p. 37)
Related to VR is MOO, which also functions as a multi-user on-line network but in a text-based rather than a sensory-based format. MOO systems find their origins in the role-playing adventure game, Dungeons & Dragons, in which players adopt roles and interact as protagonists during an imaginary adventure, usually while sitting together around a table. MOO systems take that experience on-line.
Typically, each MOO user is able to contribute to its programming, which affects everyone else’s experience. In the classroom, a teacher might create a VR or MOO experience that corresponds to a novel study, such as Lord of the Flies (Arver, 2007) or Brave New World (Rozema, 2003), and let students “interact as additional characters, discuss and solve problems based on the circumstances of the story, and complete classroom assignments within a virtual environment” (Arver, 2007, p. 37).
“The best way of thinking about a literary MOO, then, may be as an electronic book club that meets within the story world of the book itself and invites all to participate on equal footing.” (Rozema, 2003, p. 38)
Clarify Your Intentions, Justify Your Lessons
Author and scientist, Jaron Lanier, has been credited with creating and even coining the name “virtual reality.” While his original motivation for VR stemmed from empathy, to connect with other people and their perceptions of things, Lanier has since critiqued proponents of VR. A “machine-supremacy approach” to technology in general, he says, has “made the world of information ever more dominant” (Kahn, 2011).
However, he still credits VR for its medical and counselling applications (Adams, 2017). With that said, maybe it’s not a stretch to suggest that the concept of VR – if not the technology per se – has other origins: theatre and dramatic stage performance. After all, theatre has long been appreciated for offering a cathartic effect to its audiences.
Photo by mentatdgt on Pexels
On that basis, VR could be of interest to Arts and Humanities teachers on account of its potential to emphasise literary elements such as setting (time and place) and point-of-view (1st-person, 2nd-person, or 3rd-person). In fact, these two elements of literature undergo a perplexing conflation when considered in light of VR, just as they do for people who find themselves “stuck in the middle of a tale” (Rozema, 2003, p. 33) while reading a novel, and especially for audiences of live theatre performance.
For instance, as we take in a play from our vantage in the audience, we willingly accept the make-believe conceit that the actors on stage portray characters in a drama that unfolds somewhere in or perhaps beyond our own world. What we recognise before the lights dim as a stage, a proscenium, curtains, rigging, PAR lights, and so forth, we readily accept as time-and-place unique to the story being told. VR asks no less of us and simultaneously attempts to challenge our senses more directly since we now occupy the protagonist’s first-person point-of-view. Indeed, there are many works of literature in which setting can be considered a character.
Weighed against Jaron Lanier’s critique, endorsements of classroom VR can seem somewhat rhapsodic (Adams, 2009). Nonetheless, VR makes its own worthwhile case as a way for teachers to create meaningful interactive learning.
Acknowledgement: post author, Scott Robertson; editor, Yvonne Dawydiak
Interdisciplinarity, collaboration, hands-on learning – that’s the spirit of Create, Make, Innovate! We want to promote enthusiasm for sharing and learning across age groups and across subject disciplines.
Make, Create, Innovate sessions took place during the Fall 2019 in the foyer of the Neville B. Scarfe building and were hosted by Scott Robertson, a project assistant on a small TLEF grant with Dr. Lorrie Miller, Dr. Marina-Milner Bolotin and Yvonne Dawydiak, Teacher Education.
If you have an idea or an inspiration for a resource or future session, please let us know! scarfe.sandbox@ubc.ca
References
Adams, M. G. (2009, July). Engaging 21st-century adolescents: Video games in the Reading classroom. The English Journal, 98(6), 56–59.
Adams, T. (2017, November 12). Jaron Lanier: ‘The solution is to double down on being human’. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/12/jaron-lanier-book-dawn-new-everything-interview-virtual-reality
Arver, C. (2007). Are You Willing to Have Your Students Join Ralph, Jack, and Piggy? The English Journal, 97(1), 37–42.
Gardner, T. (2007, July). Bold books for teenagers: Internet literature for media-savvy students. The English Journal, 96(6), 93–96.
Kahn, J. (2011, July 11, 18). The visionary: A digital pioneer questions what technology has wrought. The New Yorker. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/07/11/the-visionary
Moreno, R. & Mayer, R. (2007). Interactive multimodal learning environments: Special issue on interactive learning environments: Contemporary issues and trends. Educational Psychology Review, 19(3), 309–326.
Rozema, R. A. (2003, September). Falling into story: Teaching reading with the literary MOO. The English Journal, 93(1), 33–38.
Schneider, J. J., Kozdras, D., Wolkenhauer, N., & Arias, L. (2014, March). Environmental e-books and green goals: Changing places, flipping spaces, and real-izing the curriculum. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 57(7), 549–564.
Feature Photo Credit: Stella Jacob on Unsplash
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