by Dot Cannon

 

Who knew that spending five to seven minutes in VR could make you more altruistic?

Or that VR could be the platform for a memorable birthday celebration?

Or that a now-taken-for-granted innovation would take 400 years to catch on?

These were just three insights from this week’s VR/AR Global Summit Online Conference and Expo.

For the first time, the VR/AR Association hosted their popular event entirely in virtual space.

This  three-day conference, which started at 1000 UTC on Monday, June 1,  spanned three time zones.  Participants represented 30 countries, and more than 200 speakers and exhibitors were on hand to offer perspectives on the ways XR will change our world.

Networking, a virtual expo, panels and presentations were all part of the VR/AR Global Summit Online Conference and Expo.   Attendees could share resources in chat, or engage in a short, face-to-face video chat with other participants.

And presentations happened on three separate platforms, including YouTube and the VRARA’s Facebook page.

Programming was geared towards our current circumstances, during the pandemic.  However, the conference also projected into the future.   Presenters offered different scenarios for the ways we’ll use virtual, augmented and mixed reality, post-COVID 19.

VR and presence

“VR is so real that your brain thinks it’s real,” said Stanford PhD  candidate Aditya Visnwanath.   Aditya, who is a Knight-Hennessy Scholar and Co-Founder of Inspirit VR, began his presentation, “The Many Faces of VR in Education”,  by sharing his research findings.

Referencing the popular VR animated “walk the plank” application, which is one of the first which Stanford gives participants, Aditya explained users’ reactions.

“You know, for a fact, that this is a fake world.  It’s not real,” he said.   (This particular application places the user on a plank, high above a busy city street.)

“…However, the moment that we ask you to jump from the plank, the rear part of your brain–your fight-or-flight response…has not sufficiently evolved to know the difference between what’s real and what’s not real.  So that will generate the same physiological response in your body, as if you were jumping from a real plank.

“…Your conscious brain knows this is not real, but your subconscious brain is fooled into believing this is a real experience.  And in social psychology, we call that presence.”

Aditya said that giving users that sense of presence was key to the use of VR in education.

“The moment you can establish presence, you can really put a user in very visceral, very engaging, deeply immersive.experiences that can lead to positive behavior changes in the real world, that can lead to other effects and learning outcomes.”

One such example, he continued, was a simulation he and his fellow researchers do at Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab.  Users participate in an experience in which they become superheroes, flying around to save a child from a burning building.

“We are able to measurably demonstrate an increase in altruism if you participate in altruistic activities such as this in the virtual world…

“…Who would have thought that spending just five to seven minutes inside a simulation of this kind can lead to behavioral changes that persist, once you take off the headset?”

Empathy and instruction

 

VR, Aditya continued, was also “very compelling” to put the user “in the shoes of someone else” for empathy training.

“At the end of this (exercise), you subconsciously believe you are embodying the avatar of that person,” he said.

“…And following that, if you experience a day in the life of that person,…we can measurably see changes in your attitude…(and behavior) just by virtue of spending a few minutes in these virtual simulations.”

Aditya told the audience he had first experienced VR as an educational implement while leading a Google Education team in a pilot project in Mumbai, during a summer trip in 2016.  Using Google Expeditions, the team taught geography and history to students at an extreme low-income school, through “virtual field trips”.

Students built their own Google Cardboard headsets, and Aditya and his team saw an increase in engagement and curiosity.

“They were just (using) still images, not even immersive simulations,” Aditya said.  “This is what got me excited about VR.”

That excitement led to two other studies in Georgia in 2017 and 2018–and to the genesis of Inspirit VR.  Inspirit is scheduled to launch in August, 2020, with applications for biology, physics and chemistry.

“The goal of VR really, in STEM activity, is to bring that interactivity…which STEM education is totally missing right now,” Aditya said.

Challenges, a need–and a path forward

 

However, he acknowledged, there are obstacles to widespread implementation in schools and colleges.

“If you spend more than ten minutes in a Google Cardboard headset, it can lead to headaches (and nausea),” Aditya said. (“Using the technology can be awkward, which is why, in the past, the technology wasn’t integrated after research studies were completed.”)

But current research figures show that current STEM instruction is falling far short of its goals, he continued.

“The most powerful statistic that I saw in STEM, was that more than half of the students that started a course in STEM, whether (online or offline), ended up dropping out of the course before finishing it,” Aditya said.

“And this was largely due to a lack of reinforcing fundamental concepts, a lack of building confidence and self-efficacy…(with the result that students, in late high-school years and at the community college level, dropped out as the concepts became more complex).”

“Clunky” hardware and a lack of both money and time were additional obstacles which Aditya cited, to widespread classroom implementation of virtual-reality instruction.

“(The six-DOF headsets)…were just too expensive,” he said.

…”In terms of other challenges,…One thing every that teacher knows…is, they’re really strapped for time…a teacher really very rarely has the time, in a classroom, to do VR.”

“And then on the content side, it seemed like content was just not fully…interactive,” Aditya added.

“So, Inspirit was launched, to address these four challenges.”

A look at Inspirit

Aditya told the audience that Inspirit offered hands-on VR labs, designed to be short and customizable.   Inspirit includes an instructor dashboard, he said, where teachers can assign work and monitor student progress.

“..And, we are hardware-agnostic…We are purely a software platform, and our goal is to sit on consumer devices,” he said.

He also showed slides illustrating Inspirit’s STEM courses, including a “physics playground” where students pick up and toss objects.  Students can look at parameters and change textures of the objects, as well as change gravity.

Wrapping up his talk, Aditya explained that VR was “by no means” intended to replace anything currently in the classroom.  Instead, the virtual simulations are meant to be supplemental.

And he also asked for input, before Inspirit goes live on August 1.

“At every step, we try to be true to our research,” he said.

“…We are running a bunch of focus group sessions,over the next two months,” he said.

“Because we want all kinds of stakeholders to give us more feedback before we launch our four years’ worth of research, in the fall….and (to) help us improve our product.”

(If you’d like to offer input as part of Inspirit’s summer focus group, here’s the link for more information!  And check out our earlier podcast interview, where Aditya shares the story of his journey as an innovator, prior to the VR/AR Global Summit.)

A chance to connect

The three days of the VR/AR Global Summit Online offered a number of networking opportunities.  “Speed Dating” was available to Premium Access members.   (Sadly, we can’t give much information on that; our computer balked at entering, multiple times!)  We heard one participant say they had had three minutes to connect .

In addition, the Virtual Expo section hosted live demos, panels and group discussions.   Virtual exhibitors, at the time we checked in, included Pico, FreeRange XR, VisionLib augmented reality and a number of others.

And a definite highlight, with which our computer actually did cooperate, was the Educational “Speed Dating” on Tuesday.  Twenty participants chatted, “face-to-face” in the virtual group chat, with comments on the side.   Moderator Carlos J. Ochoa Fernandez, who is both the president of VRARA’s Madrid chapter and the Founder/CEO of ONE Digital Consulting, kept the discussion going with insights and resources from his experiences with XR.  A startling fact he mentioned: a VR app for education was available in Spain 20 years ago!

As the discussion wound down, very few participants seemed to want to leave.  The atmosphere had been festive and playful, with two participants holding up their instruments (a guitar and a ukelele) and “threatening” to play them, and numerous resources for the implementation of XR into curricula, written into the chat.

(“It took 400 years for the Gutenberg printing press to become widely accepted and used.   Acceptance of new technologies is slow,”) one participant commented.

But that same attendee had some encouraging thoughts about the future of XR in education.

“Ninety percent of the U.S. population hates math.  Ninety percent hates biology–can you imagine being a human and hating biology?  This technology is the chance to break that.”

A catalyst–to create something better

Environmental issues, social inequality and impersonalization of technology were all issues which The Wild Co-Founder and CEO Gabe Paez referenced, in his talk, “The Virtualization of Transportation”.

Currently, Gabe said, cities are built to center around vehicles.

“The cars just dominate,” he said.  “To the point where our cars are consuming 50, 60 percent of the cities–and some cities, even more.”

But, Gabe continued, that current system leads to inequity.

“Where you live has a major impact on your access to a quality education, healthcare…and of course, jobs.

“Transportation, in and of itself, is not accessible to all,” he said.  “Cars (and flights) are very expensive.”

Impersonalization was another problem today, he said, due to the Internet.

“The human connection…is devoid.  And so our social networks can be full of anger and frustration,” Gabe continued.

“…There’s a piece missing, that separates us as people.     Video is, maybe, one step towards that.

“Right now, COVID-19 exposed these flaws.  The economy’s crumbling, because of these flaws—and then we have climate changes.

“We’re at a breaking point, on so many levels, that it’s very overwhelming.  And so, I look at virtualization as a possible solution to this.”

Virtualizing and enhancing

Among the uses of virtual reality Gabe mentioned, was in the educational field.

Like many parents, he is homeschooling his children during the pandemic.  His children, he said, missed the experience of being in school as they learn.

“A teacher posting an assignment and a student posting their reply, it just doesn’t have the magic of having that interaction that can play out.”

But Gabe envisioned the ways an immersive classroom might provide that experience at home.

“(Students) can be looking around at other students.  They could chat with the student (near) them while still be listening to the teacher,…(if) virtualized in a virtual classroom.  They can have this (socially connected but physically distanced) experience.”

Gabe also discussed professional applications: virtualization of business travel.

“Do those meetings really have to happen in person, face to face?  Could we virtualize those interactions into a higher-quality application that takes place locally?” he asked.

Then, Gabe demonstrated the ways in which The Wild’s technology combines “people, places and ideas” through XR.

“The magic of immersive computing is that we can connect those ideas, in ways that were not possible before.  They can augment a building onto a physical site and experience it in augmented reality.”

“(A prototype) can be aligned, instead of flipping through pages and pages of blueprints (to illustrate an idea).”

As mentioned in our earlier interview, The Wild is mainly designed for professional virtual collaborations by architects and designers.  However, that original goal doesn’t preclude some personal and social applications.

Enchantment in The Wild

“Just this weekend, …my oldest daughter had her ninth birthday,” Gabe said.  “And I really wanted to do something special for her birthday.  We had the challenge where we’re still physically isolated from our community, and I didn’t want to her to get together to have a birthday party at this time.

“And so, we decided to use virtual reality, as a means for her to have that party.”

Gabe said he distributed headset to three of her friends with sanitized headsets.

“We all came together, inside of virtual reality, and we had a party, together…from our homes.”

The girls, he said, played “checkers” on a giant virtual checkerboard, taking the role of checker pieces.  Then they ran through a virtual maze–with some guidance from Gabe, who looked on as “sort of a giant in that space, looking down at the maze that they were running through.”  They also spent some time aboard a virtual pirate ship.

“And, you know, it was a little girl’s ninth birthday and it was awesome,” Gabe said.  “To see it not just as something that is possible to do in the future someday, but…as something we did last weekend.

“And it was imperfect, of course…but there’s the seed of something special there.”

The VRARA’s first all-virtual VR/AR Global Summit took place Monday, June 1 through Wednesday, June 3, 2020.  If you missed the programming, you can see the talks, AND the first VR/AR Student Design Competition, on either VRARA’s YouTube channel (look for VRARGS for “Global Summit” for their most current content) or on VRARA’s Facebook page.