XR-Based Learning: How Institutions Engage Through Immersive Experiences

Immersive, multisensory experiences can draw students and faculty into other realms, beyond the limitations of the physical world. Not unlike today's popular escape rooms, in these scenarios, learners may have to solve complex puzzles or improvise with found elements—sometimes while communicating with others who are also engaged in the virtual environment.

Launched in early 2017, HP's Campus of the Future project engaged with EDUCAUSE in an exploration of extended reality (XR) technologies in higher education. Specifically, the project included augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and 3D printing and scanning. While it's not the first effort to explore the integration of these technologies into educational experiences, it is perhaps one of the broadest to date, spanning 11 institutions and learning environments across the United States.

Whereas HP supplied the hardware, software, and technical support, EDUCAUSE had wide latitude in designing and carrying out the research study. It was EDUCAUSE researchers who devised the study's methodology, collected the data, and performed the analysis, acting independently at each stage.

Below are summaries of three university projects that have integrated immersive learning experiences into the curriculum from a variety of angles.

Exploring Simulations in Teacher Training

In MIT's Scheller Teacher Education Program, future teachers are trained using VR. This includes games for in-class learning, simulations and programming tools, curriculum development, teacher education, and professional development.

In one specific example, the technology has been designed to help ninth- and tenth-grade biology students understand how a cell functions and what can go wrong via a scale-accurate VR walkthrough of a cell. The project combines what have been called 21st-century skills (problem solving, negotiation, and collaboration) with domain-specific knowledge—in this case, biology. When a malfunction occurs, the VR user must determine how to fix it from within the simulation. Users, however, can view only what is directly in front of them, just as if they were really present within the cell; a second participant has a tablet and is able to examine a large-scale overview of the cell and its components. Their mission? To communicate continually and effectively with one another until the problem is remedied.

Teachers who participate in this simulation gain a greater understanding of the student experience with VR, as well as its potential for diverse skill acquisition. Educators and researchers working on the project have explored best practices for teachers as meaningful collaborators during its design phase, as well as practical considerations regarding how teachers can serve as facilitators during the implementation phase.

Redefining First-Year Experiences

Phasing VR into a specific discipline's curricula requires careful thought and planning. Marrying outcomes-oriented pedagogy to VR projects isn't necessarily a smooth or straightforward process.

John Stuart, an Associate Dean at Florida International University's (FIU) College of Communication, Architecture + the Arts (CARTA), understands this well. His team began their yearlong project by asking how they might use HP-provided VR equipment to rethink what FIU's First Year Experience could provide to first-time-in-college (FTIC) students. The result? A multi-user environment where lessons of ethics related to design and technology, environmental stewardship, and interpersonal communication all come into play.

"These courses have traditionally offered students introductions to disciplines and are intended to help them find direction," Stuart said. "For FTIC students in our College of Communication, Architecture + The Arts, which has majors ranging from journalism and marketing to architecture, art, music, and theater, we felt that the project could help students have an awareness of the disciplinary diversity within the college as they focus on their own agency within the environment."

Jeffrey Pomerantz, author of Learning in Three Dimensions: Report on the EDUCAUSE/HP Campus of the Future Project, cited this project as an example of how institutions can foster a greater sense of belonging among on-campus students. "The environment students were given was an area of wetland that's flooded—something not together uncommon in that part of the country. They had to work in groups to create an environment where they'd be able to navigate via drainage, paths, or buildings, but it simply couldn't be completed solo. There's no way a single student could do all of this, so collaboration was a key part of virtually managing the site."

Indeed, from the moment students were assigned a small virtual area covered with 1.5 feet of water to the time they constructed a shelter for themselves and a collaborative space for community use, they're asked to reflect on their own responses to the VR challenges set before them. Stuart reported that this act of collaboration and reflection—the idea that student learning and success after college are nurtured by ethical, interactive, integrated, and interdisciplinary experiences—forms the pedagogical core of the project.

For now, the CARTA team look forward to receiving feedback in order to iterate and redesign the projects. "The equipment has enabled our team to experiment with new pedagogical ideas involving VR that previously hadn't been possible to conceive," Stuart said. This includes an HTC Vive VR/AR system with a headset, two handheld controllers, and two base stations that help the headset and controllers track their locations in space. It's specifically designed for VR gaming and enables full immersion in a VR environment, but also can be made "transparent" so that the wearer sees an AR overlay over the real world.

Making VR Portable and Accessible

VR can represent a more inclusive teaching opportunity, such as expanding VR learning experiences outside the classroom or campus lab and into entire communities. Faculty researchers at Syracuse University are currently pursuing this angle. Unique among the participants in the Campus of the Future project, Syracuse University had an HP Z VR Backpack PC [http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/vrbackpack/overview.html], which researcher Jason Webb characterized as the kind of portable technology they'd "always been waiting for." The relatively flat PC is designed to fit into a backpack harness, which allows the user to move freely while it is worn.

The Syracuse team had been approached by local K–12 librarians who were particularly interested in bringing age-appropriate science and STEM-focused simulations to their schools. The university team has conducted a series of "popup" events where they have taken VR Backpack rigs to local schools or community gatherings, or even just onto Syracuse's own campus quad, and enabled users to experience VR environments. In terms of outreach, this approach is especially effective because of the relative novelty of the technology—and the convenience of anywhere, anytime technology that truly removes physical constraints from learning experiences.

Pomerantz noted that educators and students alike prefer the deployment of this kind of mobile VR technology in the classroom to other types of VR equipment. "To have that freedom of movement is exactly what users want," he said. "Many of the project teams voiced concerns around simulations that encouraged full immersion and yet inevitably encountered issues that would break that experience, whether from a tethered wire or someone tapping you on the back."

"With the backpack, it is easy to forget that you are wearing a rig at all," Pomerantz added. "The input you're getting visually isn't the real world; it's computer generated, but it's really easy to suspend your disbelief—except of course, for the controllers in your hands."

Naturally, this kind of mobile VR outreach serves a dual purpose: obtaining feedback on ongoing research and development from new users, and generating greater community interest. The portability and openness of the Syracuse team's approach means that VR (and studies surrounding it as a medium) won't only occur in campus labs and that the focus of the experiences will be increasingly developed to suit a local context and specific educational needs. In fact, the team has plans to launch more popup VR events in the future, introducing the general public to the wonders of virtual worlds.

Kristi DePaul of Founders Marketing provides editorial support and regular contributions to the Transforming Higher Ed column of EDUCAUSE Review on issues of teaching, learning, and edtech.