Virtual Reality – Revolutionary or Revolting

I recently read a piece from Michael Horn published in the Fall 2016 edition of Education Next – Virtual Reality Disruption: Will 3-D technology break through to the educational mainstream? Mr. Horn raises some interesting points on the utility of virtual reality in the classroom and whether this evolution is here to stay or phase out like other fads that have come and gone before. On the positive side, you have virtually unparalleled access to sights, sounds, and experience brought to you in stunning immersive 360 degree 3-D; as an alternative, reports are surfacing that suggest that students cannot determine the difference between what is/was real with what is/was experienced in VR. Further work and research are needed to shed light on these findings and assist with shaping how these experiences are woven into curriculum design.

When you think about it, VR as a curriculum tool is not unlike most that have come before it. Take computers or smart phones as examples; without context and guidance, adoption of these tools in the classroom could actually do more harm than good. It’s up to the curriculum designer, and ultimately the facilitator, to link the tool/experience with the lesson objectives and create meaningful/thoughtful experiences for students.

As a tangible example of how immersive virtual reality can be incorporated, let’s dive into the design of Envision’s Advanced Medicine course; a 10-day summer residential program housed at Johns Hopkins University. 

In summer 2017, Envision partnered with Arch Virtual to design an immersive VR in health and medicine.  The product was a virtual operating room and basic scenario where students performed a simple medical procedure (tending to a laceration on the virtual patient’s abdomen).  On the whole, students were blown away by the experience and left having ‘experienced’ the sights, sounds, and overall feel of an operating room. 

For summer 2018, Envision and Arch Virtual have partnered again but this time are setting out to replicate one of the program’s existing hands-on workshops (fixation of a fractured long bone designed by the Apprentice Doctor Corporation) but in the virtual space.  The team chose this more complicated procedure to ensure the virtual operating room experience was directly tied to existing curriculum – providing students a more rounded experience that will include physical hands-on and virtual immersive components. Expectations are high that, by using this combination of real and virtual curricular design, student engagement and learning gains will be tangible (and not virtual).