Captivate Your Classroom: Create Your Own Virtual Training Modules

Purpose & objective

Our purpose is to share, educate, and empower participants about how we utilize 360° video and virtual environments in our projects to help advance digital age learning in today’s society. We will familiarize and update the audience with the current tools that are available in the VR space to create self-guided virtual learning environments. We strongly believe that the use of 360° video and VR can be an effective tool to engage students and enhance learning in the classroom. Our prior work in 360° video and VR has indicated that interactivity is lacking in the creation of virtual environments. Virtual environments are often passively experienced, which can leave participants vulnerable to being disconnected from the content and concepts they are experiencing. Introducing interactivity—in the form of hotspots, live quizzes, informational blurbs, and audio content—can increase learner engagement in VR environments and thus enhance retention of content. This approach aligns with our belief in the importance of incorporating technology not for technology’s sake, but for the purpose of enriching the learning experience of individuals. We stress the importance of “why?” and “how?” in all that we do; participants in our session will learn the importance of identifying the why and establishing the how in order to build a solid foundation for implementing VR technology in their classrooms. In partnering up with a subject matter expert who currently has a science education monitoring project called Our Project in Hawaii’s Intertidal (OPIHI) which utilizes both classroom and field components, we realized that VR could fill a need where field time is limited to provide students with the opportunity to experience field instruction no matter where they are. We will share our templated process—including the methodologies and procedures for creating self-guided, resource supplemented virtual training modules that can be used in conjunction with real-life field experience to enhance student learning and model the scientific process. Participants will walk away with the tools, framework, and basic steps needed to conceptualize and create their own virtual training modules. We will share the Adobe Captivate platform with our audience by presenting pricing, functionality, and the general navigation of the software. We will present how we utilized Adobe Captivate to create our content, and also provide alternative tools for those who are on a strict budget to create their own experiences. Participants will have the ability to demo our virtual training module. Another purpose of our presentation is to network and engage with other individuals who are either looking to or are currently implementing similar digital age technologies in their educational environments, and discuss how these technologies are working for them.

Supporting research

Dodd, Bucky J., & Antonenko, Pavlo D. (2012). Use of Signaling to Integrate Desktop Virtual Reality and Online Learning Management Systems. Computers & Education, 59(4), 1099-1108.

Dubovi, Levy, & Dagan. (2017). Now I know how! The learning process of medication administration among nursing students with non-immersive desktop virtual reality simulation. Computers & Education, 113, 16-27.

Lamb, Antonenko, Etopio, & Seccia. (2018). Comparison of virtual reality and hands on activities in science education via functional near infrared spectroscopy. Computers & Education, 124, 14-26.

Li, B.J., Bailenson, J.N., Pines, A. Greenleaf, W.J. & Williams, L.M. (2017). A Public Database of Immersive VR Videos with Corresponding Ratings of Arousal, Valence, and Correlations between Head Movements and Self Report Measures. Frontiers in Psychology, 8 (2116), doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02116.

Makransky, Terkildsen, & Mayer. (2017). Adding immersive virtual reality to a science lab simulation causes more presence but less learning. Learning and Instruction, .

New Media Consortium., & EDUCAUSE. (2018). EDUCAUSE/NMC Horizon Report - 2018 Higher Education Edition. Louisville, CO: EDUCAUSE.

Parong, J., Mayer, R., & Graham, Steve. (2018). Learning Science in Immersive Virtual Reality. Journal of Educational Psychology, 110(6), 785-797.

Shriram, K., Oh, S.Y. & Bailenson, J.N. Virtual reality and prosocial behavior (2017), in Burgoon, J.K., Magnenat-Thalmann, N., Pantic, M. & Vinciarelli, A. (Eds.), Social Signal Processing, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2017), pp. 304-316

Teisl, Noblet, Corey, & Giudice. (2018). Seeing clearly in a virtual reality: Tourist reactions to an offshore wind project. Energy Policy, 122, 601-611.