insights into immersive virtual reality in real classrooms
I was recently commissioned to write a literature review on immersive virtual reality for teachers by the New South Wales Department of Education. The Department kindly distilled the literature review into an infographic to guide teacher practice
The report is: ‘Immersive virtual reality, children and school education: A literature review for teachers.’
I welcome dialogue on the literature review from teachers, researchers and developers – A/Prof Erica Southgate
As we move into Phase 2 of the VR School Study, the team thought that we would give you a quick video update on what we have learnt so far and what we hope to achieve over the next few months. Here is Associate Professor Erica Southgate with the low down!
And how cool is the featured picture (top). It is a student work sample from Phase 1 of the study. On the left is a bluebell that the student created in Minecraft VR and on the right is how he labelled the cross-section of the flower by drawing on his research on the different parts and functions of a plant. He took Erica on an amazing guided tour of his creation where they both flew around the flower (like bees) while he explained the meaning of the labelled cross-section to her. It was a thoroughly researched scientific experience and great fun to boot!
This paper reflects on the ethical and safety implications of implementing highly immersive virtual reality in junior high school classrooms from data collected during phase 1 of the VR School Study.
It should be referenced (APA 6th):
Southgate, E., Smith, S.P., Eather, G., Saxby, S., Cividino, C., Bergin, C., … Scevak, J. (2018). Ethical conduct and student safety in immersive virtual reality: Protocols and resources from the VR School Research Project. IEEE VR Third Workshop on K-12+ Embodied Learning through Virtual & Augmented Reality (KELVAR) which is a part of the IEEE VR Conference, Reutlingen, Germany, 18-22 March, 2018 (pre-publication version).
Unless you’ve tried it, it’s hard to imagine what’s it’s actually like being in Minecraft VR in an embodied way instead of playing it on a screen.
The VR School Project is collecting all kinds of data including video and screen capture of student activity in Minecraft VR. Every so often we will post video or screen capture (where students cannot be identified) as a little window into student activity in Minecraft VR.
The video presented below is a first-person perspective from a boy who is selecting materials before going to join his friends to continue building their virtual reality cafe, which was the learning task. You can hear dialogue from the boys, the teacher and the researcher. Check out his cool dog-headed avatar!
Can immersive virtual reality (IVR) be used to get girls interested in technology subjects and digital careers? The VR School Project offers some insights into this interesting question.
Girls and women are significantly under-represented in STEM courses and professions. In Australia, 84 per cent of those with STEM qualifications are male (Office of the Chief Scientist, 2016) and women make up only 19% of those enrolled in IT degrees (Zagami, 2016). In the USA, women hold less than 25 percent of STEM jobs (Beede et al., 2011) and make up 18% of those with a computer science degree (Vu, 2017). By age 14, girls are far less likely than boys to aspire to STEM-related careers (Archer, 2013). In lights of these statistics, it is worth asking – Can IVR be used to get girls interested in technology subjects and careers?
From phase 1 of the VR School project, we make the following observations:
While our sample size is relatively small, these phenomena indicate a need to investigate gendered patterns of IVR technology engagement and interaction more closely. Utilizing social and psychological theories of masculinity and femininity to understand behaviour and opportunity will be important. Having a female researcher on site who demonstrated knowledge about the equipment and immersive experiences was probably helpful, particularly when girls needed encouragement or when they asked about future career opportunities. We believe that IVR does have the potential to switch girls on to technology subjects and careers. However, much more fine-grained research is required to understand and address gender dynamics in classrooms if this is to be fully realized.
Bought to you by a woman who loves VR, Associate Professor Erica Southgate
What do high school students say about using immersive virtual reality (VR) for learning? Student reflections from the VR School Project provide unique insights into the educational potential and problems of using immersive VR in real classrooms.
‘VR is really cool because different types of learners are able to effectively absorb the information they need to be taught. It’s also fun, and has a reputation for being fun.’
Fifty four students aged 13-15 years participated in phase 1 of the research. As the quote above indicates, the majority students were excited to be given the opportunity to use Minecraft with the Oculus Rift to do their science or ICT lessons. Some talked about the experience as being ‘FUN, FUN, FUN’, saying they ‘would recommend it to anyone.’
Other students thought that immersive VR had the potential to transform learning in the classroom:
‘I personally think learning with Virtual Reality will change students perspective of learning in a majorly good way as it gives the student a whole new way to learn and interact with the stuff they are learning.’
Some were more equivocal, observing that ‘Although it (VR) removes distractions, it also adds them’ and it ‘was easier to get distracted by VR (version of Minecraft) than computer (version)’. The distraction factor may be a result of the novelty of the experience, however it is worth investigating further how the intensity of the experience — the sense of presence and freedom of agency (autonomy of navigation, manipulation and creativity) which Minecraft VR allows — may interfere with on-task behaviour.
A few students also mentioned cybersickness as a ‘negative’:
‘Our virtual reality tasks are entertaining and more engaging than any other normal science class, although while engaging in this task I have motion sickness which causes me to finish earlier than I normally would. There aren’t really any downsides apart from motion sickness.’
The student perspective from Phase 1 of the VR School project has yielded several ‘leads’ to be explored during phase 2 of the study which will be conducted in the first half of 2018. Harnessing student enthusiasm for immersive VR for increased on-task learning is vital if the technology is to enhance education.
Furthermore, as part of the project we screened for potential susceptibility to cybersickness and educated students about the condition, actively checking on their well-being while they were in VR. Students themselves exhibited good awareness of cybersickness and appeared to monitor how they were feeling during the VR experience, with most opting to get out at the first signs of discomfort. While there were a very few cases of cybersickness witnessed by the team, we will more closely examine the phenomenon from the student perspective during phase 2 of the project.
Associate Professor Erica Southgate on behalf of the awesomeness which is VR School team.
Photo: m.i.m.i ‘Shout!’ https://flic.kr/p/aCcip5
Fully immersive VR is a truly embodied experience. You move and interact with virtual objects and characters and, if the virtual environment is networked, with other players. It’s not like watching a movie, it’s like being in it and you can make things happen. This feeling of ‘being there’ in the virtual world is called presence or, when you are with others, social presence.
Immersive VR systems (Oculus Rift or HTC Vive) are designed so that the user is ‘protected’ or ‘contained’ by a virtual Guardian or Chaperone system. These systems consist of a 3D grid cage which pops up when the user strays beyond the safe, object free area that they have set up when configuring the equipment (see the screenshot below for Oculus Rift). Guardian systems temporarily break the sense of immersive presence by providing a visual cue that the user needs to move back into the safe zone.
During phase 1 of the VR School Project, we observed that students moved in very different ways especially in Minecraft VR where there is a great deal of autonomy in the open world game.
Some students moved very little, favoring small hand gestures and head movements and minor body rotations. Others rotated a lot but within a fairly restricted footprint but moved their heads, hands and arms more freely. There were also students who were very kinetic; they danced, boxed, galloped on the spot on virtual horses, waved their arms around, crouched down, kicked and repeatedly rotated, often getting the tether (which attaches the headset to the laptop) wrapped around their bodies.
All students in VR needed supervision, even the less active movers. In the VR School project, either the researcher or another students acted as a ‘spotter’. The spotter’s role was to make sure that the students in VR did not collide with objects or student spectators. This role was necessary because the engineered solution to safety, in this case the Guardian system, was sometimes ‘ignored’ by students. I have put the word ‘ignored’ in quote marks because it did not appear that students consciously put themselves at risk of bumping into objects. Rather, some students appeared to be so immersed that they automatically continued their actions outside of the safe area and seemed surprised when the spotter told them they were too close to objects and needed reorientation.
Furthermore, it appeared that the intensity of immersive VR could occasionally trigger a flight or fright response. For example, on one occasion when using the survival mode of Minecraft VR, a student was violently startled when spiders began to approach her. She began to crab-walk sideways at speed and the researcher had to speak loudly to her and place a hand on her shoulder to stop her running off.
There is certainly much more research that needs to be done on the adequacy of Guardian systems in breaking intense feelings of presence in VR, especially for those who are new to the experience but also in relation to startle responses. Some research suggests that young people can become so immersed in virtual and augmented reality environments that they enact unsafe behaviour due to a lack of awareness.
In most cases the Guardian system combined with the physical sensation of being tethered broke the feeling of presence enough so that student regulated their own safety in VR. The current version of the Oculus Rift is tethered, however the new Oculus Go is not. There are certainly safety issue to be explored with untethered design and practical and duty of care issues regarding the need for constant supervision of students who are in immersive VR. Much more public discussion regarding these issues is required.
Associate Professor Erica Southgate
Educators have become increasingly interested in the idea of metacognition. Metacognition is often simply defined as ‘thinking about thinking’ but to understand its implications for learning we need to look closely at a specific set of thinking processes and behaviours.
These include: how a learner plans how they will go about a task and the goals they set in relation to it; how they assess their understanding of what they’ve learnt; and how they go about evaluating their performance for future improvement.
Metacognitive processes are part of self-regulated learning. This is where learner takes control of their own learning. Self-regulated learners have a deeper understanding of content knowledge, the ability to transfer knowledge and skills, and more powerful higher order thinking strategies for problem solving, logical thought and critical thinking.
In research, there are a number of methods used to identify metacognition in learners including questionnaires, interviews and ‘think-aloud’ protocols. Observational methods can also be used and this is a key component of the VR School Project.
In our project we are collecting information through audio and video recordings of student learning in the VR room at the high schools and by using screen capture to record what is happening in the virtual environment. We then triangulate this (or look at each source of information systematically in relation to the other) and code it for metacognitive and self-regulated behaviours, and pedagogical and collaborative interaction. This is supplemented by post VR experience interviews with students and teachers. One benefit of systematic observation is that it pays attention to both verbal and non-verbal action and this is ideal for exploring metacognition and self regulation in the natural setting of the school.
Observations from the VR School Project indicate the social nature of learning in the virtual environment and the VR room. We have observed five way conversations/interactions across these two realities. These are:
The permeable, social nature of cognition and learning in VR illuminates three types of metacognitive regulation: (1) Self-regulation where students regulate their own behaviours through self-talk and talk to non-player characters; (2) Other-regulation where students working together in VR steer each other back (through talk or action) to aspects of the learning task or to features of the game; and, (3) Shared-regulation where students in VR have conversations with others, both in the virtual environment and outside of it, to process the VR experience, learn new skills and to progress the task through co-operative learning.
Understanding how virtual reality might be used to develop and enhance metacognitive skills and self-regulation is important if we are to advance beyond a ‘digital toys for classroom’ approach when introducing new technologies into schools.
This post bought to you by Associate Professor Erica Southgate and Dr Jill Scevak – We love learning!
Child protection is a serious issue in today’s society. There are laws, policies and procedures to ensure the welfare of children and young people. Schools are required to provide a protective and caring environment where student safety and well-being are paramount. In Australia, working with children checks are required by law before people can work or volunteer in settings with children and young people. School education systems have clear guidelines for teachers on what constitutes acceptable practice and respectful behaviour towards students.
When you first use VR headsets and hand controllers they can be awkward to put on, take off and adjust. Students often ask teachers, researchers or other students to help them with this. Even with a virtual guardian or chaperone system which indicates safe boundaries, people can move around in VR and come too close to objects putting them at potential risk. It is sometimes necessarily to help students to re-orientate back to a safe space in the real world so that they can avoid hitting objects (as part of the VR School project we always have a ‘spotter’ who looks out for the safety of students). When using a headset a person is either in darkness while they are waiting for an application to load or in the virtual world; basically, they cannot see what is going on outside or who is near them. It can be a bit of a shock to be in a virtual world and have someone in the real world start talking to you or putting a hand on your shoulder! Importantly, we need to be particularly mindful of students who have special needs, life circumstances or cultural norms which have made them touch-adverse.
So how can teachers, researchers and student-helpers interact with a person in VR in a safe and respectful way?
As part of the VR School project we have developed the DATA protocol. This involves involves 3 actions outlined in this poster:
Training teachers, researchers and student-helpers in the DATA method of interaction will go a long way in ensuring VR experiences are safe and respectful for all involved
What is highly immersive technology and what does the research say about using it with children and young people?
The increasing availability of highly immersive virtual, augmented and mixed reality technology that often uses head-mounted displays (or headsets) has raised questions about its safety and ethical implications in educational settings, workplaces and for leisure. However, little is known about the impact of highly immersive experiences on children and young people.
While there is no accepted definition of ‘highly immersive’, it is reasonable to say that there are some new technologies that can create very intense feeling of presence or ‘being there’ in virtual and augmented spaces. These technologies allow for a high degree of interaction and autonomy. Different types of technologies and software applications produce different levels of feeling immersed and there is still much work to be done on categorising levels of immersion and their effects on different groups of people. As part of the VR School project we are using the Oculus Rift. This technology does offer high levels of immersion particularly in virtual environments that allow navigation, manipulation, interaction and free play.
The other day I was flying in Minecraft VR, soaring high above the landscape. I was enjoying the wonder and freedom of virtual flying, until I needed to land! As I double clicked the controller and began to descend, my stomach rose to my mouth, I gasped, closed my eyes and braced to hit the ground. When I took the headset off, I was in a crouching position, knees still bent to absorb the ‘impact’.
Highly immersive technologies create cognitive, affective and sensory experiences that can often feel very ‘real’. The reactions of people using this type of technology can range from joy to terror depending on what they are experiencing and their past history. This is why we need to think carefully and ethically about the use of such technology. This is especially true when using immersive technology with children and young people because they are at different developmental stages compared to adults and this can affect how they feel, understand and react to immersive experiences.
The problem at this relatively early stage is that there is very little research conducted with children and young people using these technologies. What research there is indicates a need to explicitly bring together evidence from the child development literature with established ethical principles and our knowledge of the affordances or features of technologies.
While there are a number of ethical principles to consider, beneficence is a key one. Beneficence focuses on the welfare of people and a commitment to ‘do no harm’, especially in relation to children and youth. So let’s consider beneficence in relation to what we do know from research on immersive technology and children.
We do know that virtual reality has been used to good effect for paediatric acute pain distraction in clinical settings although there is poorer evidence on chronic pain distraction (Shahrbanian et al., 2012). So in this instance, VR is certainly not doing harm.
There is also a documented experiment using a virtual roller coaster ride which compared the prefrontal brain arousal of adults & children (mean age 8.7 years). This experiment found that children were much more susceptible to the arousing impact of audio/visual stimuli and appeared unable to critically evaluate and monitor their experience or inhibit their sense of presence in the virtual environment. In other words, because of their developmental stage, children were more strongly drawn into the experience of the roller coaster ride. Because children were unable to regulate the intensity of the experience in the same way adults could, the authors concluded that there should be more reluctance to ‘expose children to emotional virtual reality stimuli as currently practiced’ (Baumgartner et al., 2008). Given this evidence, it is fair to say that some immersive experiences may cause distress because the developmental stage of a child’s brain does not allow it to regulate the intensity of the experience in the same way an adult brain can.
Between the ages of 3-12 years children gradually develop the ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality (Sharon & Woolley, 2004). Ask any group of children between these ages if they believe in Santa and you will find that there will be an age variation between those who believe versus those that don’t – I admit I still believed in Santa until I was 11. The ability to distinguish fantasy and reality reflects individual social and cognitive development. It is important to consider this in relation to the use of highly immersive technology.
For example, Segovia et al. (2009) found that some primary (elementary) school aged children exposed to the virtual reality environment of swimming with Orcas developed a ‘false memory’ of the experience: ‘The media richness of the mental imagery…was high enough to be confused with the richness of an event in the physical world’. Similarly in another experiment, 50% of primary school aged children believed that an experience in immersive VR was real one week after being put in the virtual environment (Stanford VHIL, 2015).
And its not just young children that we need to be concerned about. In the outdoor augmented reality game, Alien Contact, older students (aged 11-16 years) asked researchers if aliens had actually crashed at their school and if the researchers were FBI agents (Dunleavy et al., 2009).
Just because a technology can afford certain immersive experiences doesn’t mean they will be psychologically appropriate or safe for all children and young people. There are a number of aspects to consider before using immersive technologies with children and youth as the diagram below indicates:
Diagram: Conceptual framework for considering aspects of immersive environments in a developmental context (Southgate, Smith & Scevak, 2017).
It’s important that as new immersive technologies become widely adopted that educators engage with questions about their safe and ethical use in the context of what we know about the cognitive, social, moral and affective development of the child and long-held ethical principles such as beneficence. A careful, evidence-led approach is required to the use of highly immersive technologies in schools. This is part of our duty of care towards students.
If you would like to know more about ethical principles, child development and immersive technologies you can read a paper we have written on the topic. Please feel free to leave a comment or contact me if you would like to discuss.
Erica Southgate, Associate Professor of Education and VR flying aficionado.
References
VR School 