We're having a little celebration here for the Chinese New Year. As the celebrations are happening, we can put on the VR headsets and experiences, we can see the streets and the parades and the vibrant color. And instead of watching a YouTube, which is two dimensional, and now we can see it in a 3d world where we can look up and around and down and we can hear the sounds, we can see it in real time.
There's been a real debate lately over the value of in person learning versus online learning. But lost in those discussions are the ways that technology can enhance teaching, both in the classroom and beyond. virtual reality headsets can show students the ruins of ancient Rome in a way that the pictures in a history textbook cannot. This is random acts of knowledge presented by Heartland Community College. I'm your host, Steve fast. Today we'll take a look at how technology is transforming the possibilities for students studying health sciences, history, geography, and other subjects.
I'm Dr. Anna Catterson. And I serve as the Executive Director of Online Learning and Instructional Technologies here at Heartland. Well, technology
is certainly playing a larger and larger role in the classroom, including, you know, there are podcasts that your students produced not unlike this. And it seems to be that more than ever, there are different avenues and ways for students to do their work and to engage in learning. One of those ways is with virtual reality. Can you talk a little bit about how VR technology is starting to get integrated into the classroom?
Absolutely. Here at the Teaching and Learning Commons or the TLC, we have been investing in faculty in adopting innovative technologies to create high impact learning scenarios for students. And in our quest of moving forward, we have adopted the Oculus quest to, we have purchased 40 of those headsets in partnership with our foundation. And so our students are using virtual reality for nursing simulations. We are using it for history and geography areas on campus. We also have calcolo for math students. We have Google Tilt Brush for art students. And then we have an array of other applications that are student created. And we're using the Oculus quest headsets to test those applications that students are creating as a final project in a class. So a variety of ways that we have used virtual reality. And we soon hope to be checking those devices out to students who would like to take them on loan and practice them in their own learning environment.
So when you talk about simulations like with nursing, Is this similar to a demonstration or a simulator that you might have seen in the past? Are they trying to do lab work or simulate lab work? How does that come into play?
Yeah, well, it's certainly similar. There's a series of medical cases that students can choose from, from OB patients to pediatrics, we have a series of mental health cases as well. We also have a few cases just on chest pain, or COVID symptoms, for example. So when the student puts the headset on, we load the case that the instructor or the student would like to try. And then at that point, when they enter the hospital room, or a medical office room, they're presented with a patient who talks back, they can communicate with the patient, they ask the same questions they would as if it was a patient in the room. They can check vitals, they can give medications, they can move the patient, there's quite a variety of things that they can do. It's really testing protocols and processes and communication. While you really can't fill a vein, right, or some of the answers that the patient may give may not be 100% accurate, because it is based on artificial intelligence. It does give them a sense of understanding the order of operations in the protocols. And that's what's really important that the VR provides an opportunity for the students. So we do have 75 students in the nursing program that come through that experience. So quite a few and they log about each one, each student logs about four hours of time individually. So that's a fun project. And they can come in on their own to check out that equipment and go through those simulations.
Well, there certainly are things that can't replace hands on experiences, but you can prepare for those hands on experiences, sort of intermediary step, and as you say, go through the scenarios and be thinking about it. But there are probably I would guess other instances where VR can do things that frankly, we probably couldn't do without that technology. And one of the things I was thinking about was how it might help people with certainty. disabilities, either physical or learning disabilities, that is a tool that can be more effective or offer more than you would have just in a regular classroom situation. Are there specific things along those lines?
Yeah. And I love that you brought that up because diversity, equity and inclusion is certainly very important here at Heartland. And I'm sure glad you brought that up, Steve. So absolutely, we have ways that students can access these virtual reality apps and a number of a variety of ways. We do have hand controllers, and there are accessible options within the Oculus that a student could choose. It's also available in 140 different languages, which is outstanding for international students, we have quite a few international students that come up here and like to go to their home countries to share with others. But that's also creates a unique high impact learning experience for their peers, as well as our Oculus quest, do connect the air link to a large 55 and 70 inch monitor. So while a student is wearing a headset, others in the room can also experience what's happening on the headset, because they can see it from a different perspective. And that also creates a level of accessibility, as well. We do have sound systems and headphones as well as battery packs, make it more comfortable and ergonomic for learners as well. We often hear cases where students will come in and they'll say, Oh, this is going to make me dizzy, or I feel sick if I put this on. But they realize when they do put our unit on, we have some advanced features that kind of eliminate that motion, ease that some may feel. So we've tried to create an environment to offer Universal Design for Learning, because we know that what's good for one is good for all.
You mentioned something there about international students. I wonder in instances of geography or history, the VR experience might offer something more visual that you can't do. I mean, if you're talking about European history or something, you can't see it. We read about it, we might have pictures, we might have something in a textbook, but with VR, are there specific modules that help out with those things where you can actually go and, and visualize or see part of that experience? And it might seem like you are in that place where you normally could not travel?
Yeah, absolutely. In fact, we're having a little celebration here for the Chinese New Year coming up, that we can watch live. As the celebrations are happening, we can put on the VR headsets and experience it, we can see the streets and the parades and the vibrant colors that are that are going to be presented. And instead of watching a YouTube, which is two dimensional. And now we can see it in a 3d world where we can look up and around and down and we can hear the sounds and we can see it in real time. And so that's very exciting. And the same thing is true for different ancient ruins. We have gone to Egypt and seen some ancient pyramids, Dr. Wayne bass has brought his students into the Teaching and Learning Commons. And they have chosen different countries to study. And that's been a fascinating way for them to actually look at museums, for example, the Smithsonian museum that they can actually be in that museum and see those artifacts rather than just read about them. So lots of great ways that students can interact and engage to those high impact learning scenarios.
You mentioned that you have certain instructors, professors coming in bringing in their students, how has the overall faculty, how have they taken to this? Is it something where they are excited about it, where some are more trepidation? How is it sitting with those who are teaching these courses?
Say that it's a mix, and that is probably the same for our students, too. It's still very new, and we haven't developed a lot of education towards it quite yet. But we do have a few champions, faculty champions who have really embraced it. And that has carried on to others who might be a little bit more reluctant, or maybe just don't know how it impacts their discipline. But once we do have a few faculty and I'd say we have about 13 faculty who are using it regularly at this time, it is a trickle down effect. Others are intrigued and want to know how they could use it for their discipline. And now that we have more headsets that has been extremely beneficial because now our outreach can grow to other areas on campus that we hadn't thought of before. We were really targeting nursing, especially history and geography. But now that we have more headsets, it really opens up additional opportunities for us to explore what other disciplines that we could tap into. And our students are very similar to our faculty. They're curious and they want to learn more. We had 11 today that just came in and wanted to play Beat saber, which is a light saber game. It's a real fun popular Oculus quest app. But it was a way for them to release stress with finals coming up. And we certainly want to, you know, have that edutainment value as well. So we do have some mental health apps that provide some stress reduction and meditation and yoga and themes that can help during stressful times of the year. So, you know, we do have some that are more likely to grasp virtual reality, and others who are slowly coming along, we just kind of have a mix of all different levels of experience.
So when you mentioned the nursing programs, my mind went to the fact that during COVID, when we were in more of a shutdown situation, and labs couldn't be open, there were a lot of people looking for other remote learning methods to make sure the students didn't get too far behind until they could get back into the lab experience. Was any of this VR technology employed then? And if it wasn't, is it something that you would see maybe being part of a online learning experience in the future.
So our partnership with nursing kind of began around COVID, when they were looking for ways trying to be creative of how to get the clinical hours completed. And so we partnered with them and adopted a product called Cinemax pretty quickly. And due to that we had a pilot class that needed to get through it before the end of the term. And that's kind of how we piloted and then it just kind of went from there. And now it's just a standard part of the nursing curriculum. But it did start with an initiative kind of a creative ploy on how we could complete clinicals through COVID, and at least get some experience working with patient care. And then from there, it's branched off, and now we have three nursing classes that will require it in the fall, we just got the scheduling down for that just completed here this past week. So we certainly are doing more and more outreach on that now. We started with 20 students, and we're up to almost 100 students now that are using it for clinical exploration.
So that raises the question of cost and how accessible this is in terms of being able for not only the college to afford it and offer it to as many students as possible, but maybe it being something that you could see in the future as part of an online learning curriculum is like buying a textbook, you could buy one of these Oculus headsets. One of the things I think that if people pay attention, they noticed that a lot of technology, the more it develops, the cheaper it does tend to get for the consumer has that made a big difference in the recent memory that as the costs come down for this technology?
Oh, absolutely. I think when I first started developing Virtual Reality applications about eight years ago, it was something where we could purchase one license or one headset, and it was enough for everybody to share because the cost was just too astronomical. Now you'll see them on shelves, they were Black Friday sales, in fact, just recently, where folks could buy them for their home. So the price is definitely much more affordable. Most of the apps now are free. We do pay for the nursing simulation and a few other additional apps. But even creating your own app can be done with a very low cost, low front end, front end costs. So definitely cost has been a contributing factor of our growth, and will allow us to sustain a model that we can continue to move forward with in the future.
Now, as far as the faculty that want to incorporate this into their courses, and want to try new things, I know that there are incentives that are offered for certain technology grants to develop this curriculum. Can you talk a little bit about that and how the college is offering that to those who want to try it out and see how they can use this?
Yeah, every year, the Teaching and Learning Commons has a innovative tech grant fund that we encourage faculty to apply for technologies that will yield high impact of learning in return, adopting some sort of innovative technologies. And we're always looking for new and innovative emerging technologies. But we also want to make sure that we choose things that will have a high impact of learning not just to choose something to choose something. But will students be able to use this tool to retain learning, that's what we're looking for. And those applications are due October 1 of every year. I believe we funded 11 faculty this year for different emerging technologies and virtual reality is one of those that we've included this year. And we hope to include again in the future. We've also funded several faculty this year to develop their own Virtual Reality applications. So instead of just purchasing an app, we want them to think about how they can be their own creator of content. And like you said, Steve, replace their textbook with an app that a student could download from an app store rather than purchase a heavy handed textbook that may or may not be utilized. So we want to focus on thinking about how our curriculum can be changed and how we can absorb for the students as well.
Do you see more opportunity for remote learning? How far will it be before we might see an entire class that you could almost have the majority of it through VR?
Yeah, that's a great question. And, and we're already there. There's already classes that are offered in virtual reality right now. It's something that's on my mind, I've been thinking about it. And I do think that we're close. We're also seeing holographic projections as well on the rise. And I'm looking at that as kind of like the 2.0 version of virtual reality where we go to holograms at some point. But we have considered offering virtual reality courses as a micro credential, and non credit course whether we get to the for credit side or not, I'm not sure when that will be, but I believe it soon because there are opportunities now that already exist through virtual reality for credit opportunities. So it is there. And Heartland definitely has a pulse on that. And we hope to tap into that in the near future.
Here. Thanks so much for talking to us about VR and how it's being used at Heartland Community College.
Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate being here.
Anna Caterson is the Executive Director of Online Learning and Instructional Technology at Heartland Community College. If you are interested in other interviews about technology, learning, or other interesting educational subjects, subscribe to random acts of knowledge on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you found this one. Thanks for listening
