New JISC Report - Learning and Teaching Reimagined (not?)

JISC - the body which advises FE/HE on the use of technology has issued an important new report on Learning and Teaching Reimagined. 

"The flagship learning and teaching reimagined report is the result of a five-month higher education initiative to understand the response to COVID-19 and explore the future of digital learning and teaching. Learning and teaching reimagined, with the support of its advisory board, and more than 1,000 HE participants, provides university leaders with inspiration on what the future might hold, guidance on how to get there and practical tools to develop your plans."

As a member of JISC's Virtual Reality Framework we were fascinated to see what the report has to say about immersive learning technologies.

The report identifies 4 possible future scenarios - more to drive discussion than as future options:

• A very familiar learning experience on campus, for students who have already adapted to a socially-distanced world. Important and distinctive here is institutional resilience is the sole driver for use of technology-enhanced learning and teaching, the ability to adapt to significant change and move operations fully online as and when required. Learning and teaching is predominantly face to face and, as such, is far less reliant on technology-enhanced learning.
• Technology-enhanced learning supplements a ‘traditional’, lecture-led, synchronous learning and teaching experience. It feels familiar to students, while offering a broader range of learning opportunities. Significantly it offers confidence in the resilience of the university experience. Leaders are increasingly aware of the benefits of technology-enhanced learning and recognise the efficiencies gained from supplementing their preferred campus-based models.
• A ‘step change’ in the higher education offering. Students experience flexibility and convenience of learning, increasing enabling adaptive and self-directed learning, with more active learning opportunities. Leaders are increasingly fluent in technology-enhanced learning and appreciative of the opportunities to adapt their offering to reach wider range of markets. Investment has begun to improve the quality and coherence of the learning and teaching experience, increasingly appealing for a diverse student population with a more inclusive and accessible experience.
• Students embrace the fully-online experience, seeking greater flexibility and an increasingly personalised learning experience. With most higher education providers adapting and enhancing their technology-enhanced learning and teaching experience in some way, the imperative for leaders and staff in this scenario is to demonstrate the high quality, unique nature of their fully online offering.  

Their "primers" for senior leaders on topics such as digital learning and innovation mention no technologies specifically, but their case studies seem more to be about good 2D VLE implementations and blended learning (thought that was a given) than more innovative approaches, such as immersive 3D, despite such technology being used in HE learning for almost 15 years now! The report has one case study which includes VR - and that is 360degree video in surgical training.

"Mixed Reality" fares slightly better with 3 mentions (two the same). There is also mention of "Virtual Worlds" (twice, duplicates), but not definition of what they mean - so could just infer VLEs. The phrases "In 2030 UK higher education learning and teaching is regarded as world class because it is

attractive to all students, seamlessly spans the physical and virtual worlds and is of the highest

academic quality" and "Students move fluidly across physical, digital and social experiences. The integration of mixed reality technologies strengthens the strong sense of university identity and community, no matter how students choose to participate and learn." are nicely aspirational but could mean anything and the report gives no hint as to how they might be achieved - or even really paints a picture of what they might mean. The closest is "We also do field trips, using virtual reality and 3-D

walkthroughs, to places I’d never be able to go otherwise" - which seems a bit 2020 (at least for some) not 2030.

Interestingly the report does have a bit more to say/paint around the idea of students having an "AI" learning guide/coach to help them with their learning, guide them to things they need to know, and possibly support them with alternate routes/methods when they struggle - time to dust off our Virtual Tutor work!

Potentially confusingly the report also links to QAAs Building a Taxonomy for Digital Learning which described immersive digital learning as an "Immersive digital engagement/experience where digital learning and teaching activities are designed by a provider as the only way in which students will engage, both with the programme and with each other. Students will be required to engage with all the digital activities and will not be offered the opportunity to engage with learning and teaching activities onsite at the provider." - so more like language learning by immersion than the use of any immersive technology. The same document has a glossary listing for AR, but none at all for VR!

So all in all it does seem a bit of a business as usual report. Whilst the scenarios are interesting there is very little in there that might encourage educational leaders to look at the potential of immersive 3D/VR - and indeed hardly anything to suggest to them that it might exist. Make better use of your VLE seems the bottom line to me!

I'd originally put a pic of a learner using a VR headset at the top of this post, but the new image seems more appropriate somehow!

If you want to be excited by what  Learning and Teaching Reimagined might be. perhaps you'd be better offer reading Chapter 4 of Ready Player One?

“During our world history lesson that morning, Mr. Avenovich loaded up a standalone simulation so that our class could witness the discovery of King Tut's tomb by archaeologists in Egypt in AD 1922. The day before, we visited the same spot in 1334 BC and had seen Tutankhamen's empire in all its glory. In my next class, biology, we traveled through a human heart and watched it pumping from the inside just like in that old movie Fantastic Voyage. In art class, we toured the Louvre while all of our avatars wore silly berets. In my astronomy class, we visited each of Jupiter's moons. We stood on the volcanic surface of Io while our teacher explained how the moon has originally formed. As our teacher spoke to us, Jupiter loomed behind her, filling half the sky. It's Great Red Spot, turning slowly just over her left shoulder.”

You can download a copy of the report from https://www.jisc.ac.uk/learning-and-teaching-reimagined

Of course it's pretty easy to criticise, so let's be a bit more constructive. What would my vision of a 2030s learning, and specifically immersive 3D learning, look like:

• Based on open-source technologies, probably WebGL/OpenXR and their descendants
• Web-delivered, no downloads
• Every experience available on desktop/laptop, smartphone/tablet or VR headset, albeit tweaked for each platform, and primarily a student choice as to which to use
• A consistent identity system (like OpenID/OpenAvatar) across experiences, so you don't need a different account for each one
• Consistent interfacing to VLEs/LMSs, e.g. via xAPI to manage student access and analytics
• A way for teachers, tutors, and students to author their own content, and with the training to do so and the supporting pedagogy to design it well
• Each school/tutor/student/subject can have its own "home space" where creativity and social interaction is encouraged
• Exercises authored/encoded in a semantic way so accessible versions can be easily generated (e.g. a sound world for a student with visual impairment), and to more readily generate lesson variations (eg for learning and assessment) for the same location/props
• A way of publishing experiences/exercises/assets to others, with IP control, eventually providing asset and exercises sets that cover the entire curriculum, and tutor/student developed
• Some flagship centralised resources, such as a complete virtual hospital
• A way of linking content together - portals from one experience to another, so the entire system can run on a federated system of servers
• The ability to have experiences as single or multi-user, to cope with asynchronous and synchronous learning and differing student needs

2030 is only 9 years away, but most of this is do'able now if we set our minds to it.

Perhaps it's time to write another White Paper?

 

Video, eLearning and VR - and the 3 Fidelities

One design model I've always liked is Prof Bob Stone's "3 fidelities" for designing immersive 3D/VR experiences.  The three fidelities are:

• Context/Environment Fidelity - how well do the surroundings model the real environment and context - but more is not necessarily better;
• Task Fidelity - how well to the sequence of actions (and their consequences) model the real task;
• Interaction Fidelity - how well do the manipulation and haptics mirror those experienced in real life.

My favourite example of Interaction Fidelity was talking to medics who gave students bananas to practice their incisions and suturing on - the bananas bruise and tear so easily it's easy to spot mistakes. Absolutely no context fidelity, and a part trainer so no real task fidelity needed, but a far better experience than trying to reproduce the activity in even the latest VR gear!

So I was wondering recently how do some of the current methods of distanced learning match on to the these fidelities. We know that it should be a case of blended learning - not one method to rule them all - but where do each of the current approaches have strengths or weaknesses?

The table below summaries our initial take as to how video, video-conferencing, eLearning and immersive 3D/VR map onto each of these fidelities.

Click image for a larger version

Note just how low eLearning scores against all of these - it may be OK for more "knowledge" based learning, but for learning that relates to places, physical tasks or interactions it really isn't a good fit.

Video can be very good for giving the sense of environment, but you can't explore beyond the frame. And whilst there is some great interactive branching video out there that explores the task dimension it is very costly to produce, and next to impossible to change.

Zoom style video conferencing can leverage some of the advantages of ordinary video - such as video tours or how-to, but again the leaner tends to be a fairly passive participant in these. Where it would score more strongly is the in the discussion/analysis phase of cementing learning.

Immersive 3D/VR can give a range of environmental fidelities, and is very good at modelling task fidelities and giving the user the options and agency to explore different routes. But like the others it fails on the interaction fidelity although we are beginning to see improvements in that area - whether it's thru haptics or features such as facial expression and body language - both of which contribute to the interaction.

So we hope that this has given you a different lens with which to look at different types of remote learning technology, and that it will help you choose the appropriate technologies for the learning task at hand.

Daden's Adventures in Second Life

As our internal corporate memory begins to fade of all the projects we did in Second Life we thought it would be useful to capture them in good old dead-tree format in a nice glossy A4 coffee-table style book - ideal for casual browsing for visitors and on trade stands!

A nice by-product is that the whole book is available for you to browse for free on-line to see the range of projects that we have been involved with. And whilst SL may not be a prime delivery mechanism at the moment most of what we did in SL has informed what we now do in Unity and in VR, and the scope of projects are still directly applicable to businesses and organisations today.

The eBook is at: https://www.bobbooks.co.uk/bookshop/photobook/dadens-adventures-in-second-life

And of course if you really feel like you must own a dead-tree version for posterity then it's available to buy for the princely sum of £57.99!

How to make your training more engaging

Ever had the feeling your employees just aren’t motivated by your learning and development programme?

We’ve all been to boring training sessions where the speaker’s droned on for hours on end and it’s taken every ounce of willpower you have not to fall asleep (but hey, at least there’s usually a free lunch). Training like this fails to engage trainees, meaning that information may not be retained or understood.

This is especially problematic when the subject matter is something they really need to know. What if failure to recall the information when they need it results in a serious mistake being made? The risk of such a situation arising can be significantly reduced by making sure your training is as engaging as possible to maximise the chances of it sinking in.

As well as improving information retention and recall, more engaging training helps employees to fully get to grip with the subject the first time around. This means they’re less likely to have to go through the same course repeatedly, thus reducing training costs as well as the loss of productivity incurred by their downtime.

More engaging training is also likely to be more enjoyable, resulting in happier employees - and what’s not to like about that?

Here are some ideas to help make you training more engaging.

Make it interactive

There are few people who can stand to be talked at for several hours without zoning out. One sure way to increase engagement is to make the session interactive. Whether that’s by coming up with activities to help trainees participate or by using tools or props to incorporate an element of ‘learning by doing’, interaction should be more than just a five-minute Q&A session at the end of a day-long course.

Go immersive

Technology has advanced enough that training sessions don’t have to stay in the classroom - even if the participants don’t physically leave the room. Immersive training applications like Trainingscapes create simulated environments and scenarios that allow trainees to gain hands-on experience in a relevant and practical way. These tools provide more spatial, visual, and audio cues as well as environmental and emotional context, so trainees are more prepared for when they have to carry out tasks in the real world.

Group activities

Learning as a group can be more effective than solo training because everyone brings their own skills to the exercise, allowing people to contribute in different ways depending on where their strengths lie. Group activities during training are often more representative of the real world, especially if teamwork is core to a trainee’s job role; incorporating such tasks into training therefore also gives people the chance to work on their interpersonal, team, and cross-cultural skills.

Gamification

The practice of applying game-playing elements to learning and training has been shown to improve motivation, indicating that trainees may learn more by completing reward-based assessments than by simply being lectured. There’s a tremendous positive boost that comes from ticking off a task or achieving an objective, and this psychology can be harnessed to create more engaging courses that motivate trainees to progress. 

Practice

The vast majority of employee training sessions are delivered for a few hours, then the trainees are sent on their way. This seems to be contrary with the way we’re taught at school - practice makes perfect, remember? There’s plenty of scientific evidence to support the notion that we are better able to recall skills we’ve spent time practicing, so why should training in the workplace be any different? Utilising a training method that can also be used for repeated practice will help trainees retain the information better, and they’ll feel more confident in their own ability when they need to call upon the same skills in the real world.

Step out of the classroom

In order to increase trainee engagement, it’s important to think outside the box - the most effective training is unlikely to take the form of a dull classroom-based lecture. By considering what your trainees need to achieve and the skills they need to learn, you can choose a solution that maximises motivation and information uptake while minimising risk.

To see how we’ve helped organisations provide more engaging training with Trainingscapes, take a look at some of our case studies.

vLearning: From Second Life to Fieldscapes

Presentation from my Virtual Worlds Best Practice in Education Conference 2017 talk describing how our experiences in Second Life have influenced the development of Fieldscapes.

vLearning: From Second Life to Fieldscapes from David Burden

And here are some images from the event. It's always good fun to use Second Life to talk about virtual worlds.