Device accessibility is another consideration. “That’s been overlooked somewhat,” Brooks says. “A lot of people wear corrective lenses. Designers may need to start thinking about how the devices accommodate glasses.”
For some disciplines and pedagogical objectives, VR experiences may not be readily available, says Dr. Matthew Bramlet, pediatric cardiologist and physician at OSF Children’s Hospital of Illinois, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria, and director of advanced imaging and modeling at Jump Simulation, a collaboration between the hospital and college.
“The problem a lot of institutions have getting into the VR game is the limited content that’s out there,” Bramlet says. “In medicine, there are some fantastic VR modules that are specific to how to put a central line in or hammer a nail into a bone. That solves .0001 percent of the curriculum.”
To address that, U of I’s medical college developed its own content. Approximately 40 faculty members have created more than 250 VR lectures. The college provides access to Enduvo, a VR authoring tool Bramlet helped create, and lab space, featuring ceiling-mounted workstations equipped with HTC VIVE headsets powered by a variety of Dell, HP and other computers.
The VR exercises that faculty devised for medical students may ask them, for example, to identify a specific artery on a 3D model.
“We didn’t want to write traditional questions,” Bramlet says. “We wanted [students to perform] more of a task.”
MORE FROM EDTECH: See these four ways colleges are embracing virtual reality.
VR Experiences Elevate the Transfer of Knowledge
Alice Butzlaff, an assistant professor with The Valley Foundation School of Nursing at San Jose State University, created original teaching exercises through a program sponsored by eCampus, a university resource that offers design and training assistance to help faculty integrate AR/VR technology, including workshops and demos of its HTC VIVE, Samsung Gear VR and other equipment.
Most of Butzlaff’s students said the technology enhanced their learning experience.
“It uses your hearing and visualization senses,” she says. “You can actually reach out and touch things — it was really entertaining for them.”