Following up my evaluation last January 'Assessing the current position of the IHAP VR walls'. In July 2024, I put together a process that aims to enable academics and clinical skills technicians to engage, co-collaborate with the Digital Curriculum Team and guide on co-designing, ideating and prototyping on immersive learning design conversations and production. All to support scenario, simulation or role play-based learning designs and develop appropriate digital resources, soundscapes, meaningful 360° footage etc. Below is an extract from the rationale:
"Overall, there is not large uptake of the VR suites. By way of building my capacity to support lecturers and clinical skills technicians to use our VR immersive rooms more effectively. With the view of offering meaningful support and collaborative approaches. I designed a survey to gather insights into lecturers and technicians technical and practice abilities in using the technology, including wider information on attitudes and blockers helping to identify specific knowledge gaps and areas for improvement. 22 responses were received by 31 January 2024.
As I suspected, it is evident that the following is lacking, in no particular order:
- Curriculum alignment
- Protected development time
- Room size
- Immersive pedagogy
Technical know-how (revisit basics, continue training in-person and hands-on, with time to cover basic troubleshooting, finding and selecting appropriate media, continue to conclude with pedagogical conversation)
To specifically address the gap of immersive learning pedagogy expertise, as ideally this needs to be addressed first to support the curriculum alignment issue. I created a process to join up, engage staff and increase co-collaborative uptake of our facilities and resource creation and deployment to support the design of immersive learning experiences.
Moreover, I am sometimes asked ‘what scenarios do we have for the VR room?’ I broadly know some of the things that occur in there, but not always the specific details of the scenarios. That’s a knowledge gap that I am hoping to address through this new process."
I developed the framework through key/headline decision points that need to be made, whilst aligning loosely to a learning design methodology, Gilly Salmon's Carpe Diem, and including a theoretical reference to the ADDIE model. There are hidden slides with details on guiding consultation, pedagogical underpinnings and developing narratives.
This had been reviewed by my colleague Digital Curriculum Support and Developer, Clinical Skills Technicians and Department Manager (who line manages the technicians). It is currently being used in some small-scale projects to road test and is being actively promoted in course team meetings as part of the new governance structure. As it's new and being implemented I'll of course obtain feedback and make necessary changes to it.
This is being reviewed by the 'TILT® Virtual Reality and Immersive Learning practice and scholarship group' and I have showcased to people beyond IHAP, of which I received a couple of comments:
Paul Hamilton, Principal Lecturer (Criminology) - "Useful thanks".
Simon Cauvain, Head of Department (Social Work)- "Brilliant! Thanks so much Dan. No doubt speak again soon."
