What is Immersive Learning and VR?

As part of the TILT Virtual Reality and Immersive Learning practice and scholarship group, for this current academic year members agreed to develop a Thrive learning pathway.  Thrive is Nottingham Trent University's Learning Experience Platform (LXP) that is a staff-facing online learning environment to deliver organisational essential learning and Continuing Professional Development.  I produced the following outline with contributions from members on the section 'Issues addressing'.

In meeting 3 of the group, members were invited to volunteer and contribute towards our first agreed collective output.  Myself and a colleague took on the sections 'What is VR and immersive learning' and 'Types of Immersive Technologies'.  But as 'Benefits/pitfalls' wasn't taken, I suggested I bring this under my section that I took on to produce; 'What is VR and immersive learning'.

I wrote this scholarly section myself rather than using generative Artificial Intelligence, as one of the main drivers of this group was to support my own understanding and practice in this specialist area.  To feed into my context and initiatives in higher education healthcare curriculum.  To best develop my knowledge is to learn through my own learning preferences of learn by doing and by producing something, which takes me through my own internal cognitive processes.  Below is what I drafted up and first published here as the primary author, before any changes were made by members.  I structured the piece around the following: definitions, benefits, challenges and opportunities.

Introduction

Immersive learning and Virtual Reality are complex, challenging and time and resource intensive to design.  Understanding on this topic and subsequent support and guidance are required in order to build confidence and competence for those wanting to design such innovative learning experiences.

In this first section, you will be introduced to what Immersive Learning and Virtual Reality is, including Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality and Extended Reality.  Followed by the key benefits to what these modalities offer to educational experiences, and the potential challenges and opportunities they present (Scott, 2024).

Defining Immersive Learning and Virtual Reality

Immersive Learning (IL) often involves, students and academics in this context, to engage and interact with a hands-on educational experience that enables and/or stimulates natural human senses (MacDowell & Lock, 2022).  IL enables educational experiences to “transcend physical space limitations to create educational opportunities that would not otherwise be physically possible” (Dick, 2021).

Immersive technology supports such experiences to be created, and therefore relates to the technical capacity to create virtual, augmented and mixed reality learning opportunities.  Virtual Reality (VR) often involves exploring and navigating a digital world, typically using a VR headset to maximise the immersion experience (MacDowell & Lock, 2022).  VR enables students and academics to experience realistic or imaginary digital environments and interactable digital objects within them.   An immersive experience allowing them to resonate emotionally and physically to what they are seeing, hearing, smelling/tasting or touching (Clark, 2022).  There are five potential VR types (Chalmers 2017: MacDowell & Lock 2022):

1. Immersive – an environment, physical or digital, that enables and/or stimulates human visual, auditory, smell/taste and tactile senses.
2. Non-immersive – multimedia and computer-generated environments and objects displaying through hardware such as computers, televisions or projectors.  Which don’t particularly enable and/or stimulate greater use of human senses.
3. Interactive – an environment, physical or digital, where the user is able to control and change, digital or non-digital, objects or environmental characteristics, through hardware such as keyboards, VR headsets, body tracking devices etc.
4. Non-interactive – an environment physical or digital,  where the user is unable to affect any control or change in, digital or non-digital, objects or environmental characteristics.  A passive experience with no ability to make action.  Hardware is still used, such as VR headsets, speakers, and visual displays.
5. Non-computer generated – use of remote-controlled vehicles, drones or 360 camera footage (specialist or mobile phone capabilities), still image or video, to explore environments, and captured to later use in other VR and AR applications.  Which can then be utilised for immersive, non-immersive, interactive or non-interactive environments.

Augmented Reality (AR) enables the real world to be explored with a digital layer to create the illusion of a digital 3D interactive object.  Mixed Reality (MR) progresses from just a digital overlay to where virtual objects can interact with real world physical objects.  Extended Realities (XR) is often used as overarching catch-all term to encompass all immersive technology modalities (MacDowell & Lock, 2022).

Key benefits

The most common listed below, in no particular order:

• Improved knowledge; critical thinking and problem-solving skills, decision-making and testing knowledge within the scenarios.  Encouraging and embedding higher order thinking and developing contextual understanding.
• Inspires innovative and pragmatic approaches to learning and improves learning outcomes.
• Enhances and transforms traditional role play-type activities.
• Ability to make mistakes in a safe and low stakes environment.  Developing and testing approaches, behaviours and responses.
• Appropriate for students that prefer to learn through experiential-based learning type modalities e.g. practice, investigation and collaboration.
• Ability to experience and respond to situations in environments that are a challenge to access due to logistics, costs and safety.  Leading to improved preparation knowledge and skills to respond to situations in those environments.

Challenges/considerations

The most common listed below, in no particular order:

• Level of understanding on the principles of effective learning design for immersive learning experiences.
• Lecturer-to-curriculum content connection and alignment, and identifying what is possible (low or high bar) with available technology.
• Time, resource and sometimes cost intensive to pedagogically design an immersive experience and technically set up/configure required hardware and software, and involve required stakeholders to support it.
• Develop pedagogical guidelines, policies and best practices and communities of practice to ensure immersive technologies are used safely, effectively, and to their full potential.  Presented in a palatable format for the intended audience to understand.
• Facilitator training to develop confidence and competence in using selected immersive technology/ies, respond to basic troubleshooting and ability to support others in using it.  Engaging in purposeful play and experimentation, and invite others to join in and share ideas can help.
• User (student) induction (training) and/or play/exploration of VR environment and technology before going live in or on a real time-bound activity.
• Facilitating group participation, including large group sizes and size of space, and identifying suitable locations to host the immersive learning.  Further exploration and consideration are recommended to develop effective design of immersive learning spaces.
• Sourcing and using appropriate multimedia to support the immersive learning design.  Including ability to select available and appropriate video and still image assets to different situation or contexts.  Users can easily be taken out of an immersive experience, especially when visually and auditory don't work as expected.
• Identifying, in some learning situations, the physical or digital environment map and interactable elements before roaming free in the learning event to avoid wasting unnecessary time.
• General configuration, maintenance and care for immersive technologies.

Opportunities – when to use

Based on Laurillard’s (2012) six learning types,  IL and VR type activities may be suitably designed, predominantly, around practice, investigation and collaboration learning type modalities (MacDowell & Lock, 2022).  Enabling choreographed and scaffolded real-world scenarios and situations to be explored and inquired, leading to the practising and testing of knowledge and skills.  Leaning more into the practice learning type which is effective when students are given the opportunity to apply theory to practice, this can be achieved through learning by doing or experiential learning activities.  These type of activities enable students to learn and practise responses/actions and allowing opportunities to receive feedback via self-reflection, peer, lecturer or through the activity itself.  In order to improve their response/action through next time (Laurillard 2012: Scott 2022).

The following principles introduced by Clark (2022: Scott 2023) can provide a base for defining pedagogies, and to inform the design and development base VR and immersive learning experiences.

1. Emotion – intense.  Emotional connection and affective impact to induce motivation.
2. Attention – total focus.  An environment that commands and maintains undivided attention.  Blocking distractions and focusing on the experience to create full immersion.
3. Experiential – learn by doing.  Carrying out real-world tasks to develop individuals recall and performance in response to something.
4. Context – keep it real.  Use of real-world information, equipment, tasks and colleagues/clients/patients etc.
5. Collaboration – communicating and working together as avatars or outside of the VR.
6. Transfer – to real world.  Applying the knowledge learnt from the VR world into the real world.
7. Retention (recall) – increases.  Consolidated long-term memory needs conditions (focused, vivid, intense, relevant, real, practical, contextualised, the impossible) and repeated practice to develop competent recall.

To supplement the above, considering Conole et al’s Forms of Activity (2004) continuum or axes approach, can help identify and articulate what and where the value is in each continuum or axes: individual <> social, information <> experiential, non-reflection <> reflection.  Furthermore, help analyse the intended learning design along with the digital tools and hardware that can support it.  For example, the difference and value of in-person synchronous immersive ‘3D’ experience, over an online asynchronous ‘2D’ experience.

To help consider pedagogy in the design of immersive learning, consider the following pedagogical and content prompts.  Adapted and expanded from Johnson-Glenberg’s Quality of Immersive VR in Education Rubric (QUIVRR) structure (Fugate & Macrine, 2022 p. 252)

1. Define clear learning objectives that are in alignment to curriculum outcomes.
2. Define how the learning objectives support higher order thinking and metacognition.  Consider evaluating through the Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition (SAMR) model.
3. Define if and how scaffolding needs to be present.  E.g. does the intended activity build up in complexity?
4. Determine if the intended learning objectives are appropriate for immersive, VR, AR or XR environments.  Is the multimedia content afforded through such approaches?
5. Identify the value of VR; with or without head set, synchronous or asynchronous, online or offline, same location or remote.
6. Identify where users have agency and control over the learning, interactions, movements and decisions in the intended activity.  And are these congruent or reinforcing concepts of the multimedia content?
7. Develop appropriate supporting learning material such as instructions, briefs and signposting to aid the immersive learning experience.
8. Design an appropriate induction or tutorial exercise to ease users into the immersive environment, and provide appropriate guidance and safety advice where required.
9. Identify where performative feedback will be given before, during and post activity.
10. Determine where and how assessment will be conducted, if required.

Reflection

Identify suitable opportunities where you could you use IL or VR in your own teaching practices.

References

Chalmers, D. J. (2017). The virtual and the real. Disputatio, 9(46), 309–352. https://doi.org/10.1515/disp-2017-0009

Clark, D (2022) Learning Experience Design: How to Create Effective Learning that Works. London: Kogan Page.

Conole, G., Dyke, M., Oliver, M. and Seale, J. (2004) 'Mapping pedagogy and tools for effective learning design', Computers and Education, vol. 43, nos.1–2, pp.17–33.

Fugate, J M B. Macrine, S L. (2022) Movement Matters: How Embodied Cognition Informs Teaching and Learning. The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England

Dick, E. (2021, August 30). The promise of immersive learning: Augmented and virtual reality’s potential in education. Information Technology& Innovation Foundation. https://itif.org/publications/2021/08/30/promise-immersive-learning-augmented-and-virtual-reality-potential [Accessed 1 March 2024].

Laurillard, D (2012) Teaching as a Design Science: Building Pedagogical Patterns for Learning and Technology. London: Routledge.

MacDowell, P. Lock, J (2022) Immersive Education: Designing for Learning. Cham: Springer.

Scott, D (2022) Digital Learning, Teaching and Assessment for HE and FE Practitioners. Northwich: Critical Publishing.

Scott, D (2023) Exploring a pedagogical rationale for VR and immersive learning [Online]. Available from: https://danielscott86.blogspot.com/2023/06/exploring-a-pedagogical-rationale-for-vr-and-immersive-learning.html [Accessed 1 March 2024].

Scott, D (2024) What is Immersive Learning and VR? [Online]. Available from: https://danielscott86.blogspot.com/2024/03/what-is-immersive-learning-and-vr.html [Accessed 8 March 2024].