Virtual Reality: A whole new world

Imagine sitting on the edge of a rocky pool at low tide. Little fish dart in a glittering shoal and an anemone pulses lazily as the sun gently warms the salty water. Imagine staring at the night sky – a velvety canvas pierced with a million brilliant stars. The moon, a milky sentinel, watches you watch the colours of the aurora borealis. Now imagine being able to bring the distant corners of the world to your classroom, or bring history to life, or explore mathematics in three dimensions. Capturing the imagination of students is testament to the skill of the educator and now, with the advancement in technology, it will soon be possible to fire imaginations further with the application of new virtual reality (VR) technology in education.

Taking centre stage at many technology shows around the world, VR is starting to garner a lot of attention. Making the headlines recently is the news that the Facebook-owned Oculus Rift headset is now available for pre-order to the general public setting early adopters back around £500. The Oculus Rift however is not the only player in this highly competitive market, with technology heavyweights such as Samsung and HTC all working on different iterations of the iconic headsets that offer a complete audio and visual experience.

So what is VR? Virtual reality, virtual environments, and augmented reality are often used interchangeably, and while there are subtle differences the main aim of these experiences is immersion. At the cutting edge of VR software development is The Foundry, providing powerful products capable of compositing streams from multi-camera rigs and organising stereoscopic workflow. Chief Scientist, Simon Robinson, says “VR content can bring a new immersive dimension into the classroom. The sense of ‘presence’ gives an immediacy to an idea or a remote event or place that becomes tangible and memorable.”

Google meets Blue Peter for its Cardboard project

Dr Lynne Hall a Reader in the Department of Computing, Engineering and Technology at the University of Sunderland says: “VR offers the potential to completely immerse yourself in an unreal, synthetic environment… Headsets are not vital and people have immersed themselves in VR spaces on the screen for many years. However, it is likely that the experience will be enhanced by total immersion [as afforded by VR headsets].”

Dr Hall is using VR technology to provide learning spaces to children from KS2 onwards. Her work includes teaching children how to respond to bullying and a major study into using VR to explore cultural differences in a safe environment. She says: “Virtual reality offers potential for experiential learning for social issues and skills. Users can practice in the virtual world before applying skills in the real world.”

Dr Hall also has many other examples of where VR can be an asset to teachers, for example in enhancing the learning experience of history, dinosaurs, sites of historic significance, biology and space.

Professor Liz Falconer, Director of the Education Innovation Centre (EIC) at the University of the West of England uses Second Life to run master’s and PhD modules on ‘virtual worlds’ taught entirely in a virtual world. Professor Falconer is excited by the teaching and learning opportunities that VR can offer and has seen a rise in students wishing to pursue research projects into applied VR. Working alongside the UWE Psychology Department, the EIC used funding from the Higher Education Academy to build a virtual counselling suite that students of clinical psychology could use as a training ground. The suite was populated with artificially intelligent bots that students could interview and then diagnose. For Professor Falconer, the benefits of VR to medicine are obvious: “It’s the intention to augment-real world experiences and to give people experiences that they can’t have in the physical world. It is just impossible to do some things, or it is unethical, or it is dangerous, and while students are learning you want them to practise, but you don’t want them to practise on real people because they could do real damage.”

Professor Falconer has plans for other VR applications. Working with the Heritage and History Studies department at UWE, and with English Heritage and National Trust Professor Falconer is beginning to look at ways in which VR could be used to augment the experience of sprawling heritage sites. Her goal is to build a virtual social space where people can experience sites like Stonehenge or Avebury by walking around it virtually as an avatar interacting digitally, and experiencing sites as they may have been experienced at the time they were built.

Virtual reality offers potential for experiential learning for social issues and skills

Bringing worlds to life in the classroom is a Google Education initiative called Google Expeditions. The technology uses the Google Cardboard headset which users build themselves from a net printed on cardboard and then run VR software from a mobile phone inserted into the cardboard frame. Jeremy Williamson, a member of the Google Educator Group (UK) brought the project to ACS Hillingdon International School in West London where he works as Technology Intergrationalist. Students aged 9–14 were treated to a world tour that took in sights such as the Great Wall of China and the jungles of Borneo. Other lessons such as Science and Social Studies benefited from the technology as students were whisked across the solar system and to historic sites such at the Aztec temples and the Great Pyramids of Giza. Commenting on the use of VR in the classroom Mr Williamson said: “Virtual reality allows teachers to ‘take’ children to relevant environments, enabling either free exploration or directing them to particular aspects.”

The rise of VR in the classroom is not without its problems. Traditionally the technology has been very expensive both at hardware and at software level. Thankfully this is no longer the case with many companies, like Google, who offer low-cost experiences and tools for teachers. VR headsets can be bulky, and have other problems such as causing motion nausea or eyestrain, though hardware providers are working hard to combat this with effective image stabilisation and proper usage guidelines. When asked about the negative sides of VR and if the technology was open to abuse, Professor Falconer said: “There are negatives in everything that humans create. We can decide what we do with it.”

The potential for VR in education is great. While the technology could never replace traditional teaching techniques it is certainly easy to see how it can be used to bring a new perspective on many subjects in a unique way.  Jeremy Williamson sums it up perfectly by saying: “Using VR alongside school curriculum means that students can learn about ideas and places conceptually, but are also able to virtually visit these places. This really contextualises their learning and, in many cases, gives an idea of scale and shape that cannot be gleaned from 2D images alone.”

While we are a long way from rolling out VR technology to every school this is a very exciting time to be watching its progress. The only limits to the scope of VR are the limits of our own imaginations.

This article was originally published by Education Technology and has been reproduced with permission of the editor. The original can be found here.

Are video games just child’s play?

It is  a story that many readers will be familiar with; video games are bad for children. Every so often tabloids and other media run stories that highlight the ways that young people can be affected negatively by the increasingly technological and immersive worlds offered by modern gaming.

Making the headlines recently is a study from Northern Ireland, titled ‘ICT and Me’. Aiming to find out how online activity and screen time affect GCSE results, the National Children’s Bureau (NCB) conducted research in 13 schools across Northern Ireland. More than 600 children, their teachers and their parents were included in the study, which took into account all aspects of young people’s computer usage, from homework activities to recreation. The study found that 95% of young people in Northern Ireland have access to ICT at home and that the children that don’t often fare worse than their classmates with 68% of children with computers at home achieving 5 A*–C grades. This figure drops to 29% among the children who don’t.

SOCIAL NETWORKING

Among the biggest concerns raised by parents was the amount of time children spent using social media platforms. Although approximately one third of young people spent up to four hours a day using social media websites or watching video clips online, no correlation was found between these activities and GCSE results. Gaming, however, was found to impact on the grades obtained by pupils. Of the young people who said they used a portable gaming device several times a day, only 41% achieved 5 A*–Cs as opposed to 77% of students who said they only rarely played games this way. Interestingly, gaming was the area of the children’s ICT usage that most particularly concerned educators with many school staff reporting issues such as attendance, motivation, and punctuality especially among young boys who were deemed susceptible to gaming addiction.

So what is gaming addiction? To Dr Caroline Brown, Senior Lecturer and Associate Teaching Fellow in cognitive neuroscience from the University of the West of England, the answer is not straightforward. She said: “Biologically, addiction is related to the increased dopamine signalling that occurs in appetitive behaviour. The dopamine response may increase with each event, giving rise to the pleasurable feeling related to the experience. In turn it becomes difficult to do without the pleasurable response.”

“The concept of addiction to playing video games is debated among academics. Addictive behaviours may have underlying causes such as poor time management or as a result of depression, for example.” Compulsive video game habits may therefore be a symptom of a wider problem, and not the cause.

Video games can be especially attractive to young people as they allow the player to explore worlds, scenarios and interactions in a less inhibited way than they can in the real world. Dr Brown states, “Teenagers are especially drawn to forming new friendships and exploring the environment as they are going through a developmental stage in which the areas responsible for behaviour are building faster pathways with the many other systems within the brain. Online roleplay, friendships and team activity within a video game might be especially attractive, given the lack of physical harm when strategies go wrong.”

Playing Pac Man after it was cool

Other game features can also be attractive to young people. Video games reward players for achieving targets in the form of points or bonuses and encourage them to meet those targets by penalising them when they don’t – making them restart the level or losing points, for example. This cycle can be motivating for young people and a wealth of learning software has been created to take advantage of the benefits of this kind of conditioning.

Learning software providers 3P have a wide range of products aimed at making learning fun. By using game-like elements 3P learning-suites, such as Mathletics and Reading Eggs, aim to encourage young people to achieve in specific areas of learning. Jayne Warburton, former teacher and CEO of 3P Learning said: “The benefit of learning through gaming is that it makes learning more fun and engaging without diminishing or undermining pedagogical credibility. But more than making boring subjects ‘fun’ it’s about engagement, which is the important metric for success in gamification.”

By including in-game trophies, scoreboards and instant, personalised feedback learners are motivated to study harder. 3P finds that teachers report increased engagement in core subjects and that learners are more stimulated to learn.

Critiques of game-based learning often cite that children who receive extra rewards for completing tasks struggle to maintain motivation when the rewards are taken away. Warburton doesn’t feel that children are at risk of the effects of this ‘over-justification’ “Rewards and positive feedback help learners gain motivation towards studying – making them more interested and stimulated to learn… They then don’t underperform without the incentives because they have already become more confident.” As with all elements of teaching educators must find a balance that’s right for them and their students. Warburton acknowledges that the situation is more complex than simply incorporating points and badges into the classroom environment. “While there’s nothing inherently wrong with extrinsic motivation, educators really need to combine that with attempts to engender intrinsic motivation too.

JOIN THE CLUB

Code Club, a volunteer organisation that aims to teach children coding at a grass roots level, has found success in over 3,000 volunteer-led after-school clubs in the UK and more overseas. Rik Cross, Director of Education at Code Club, feels that it is important that children are given the knowledge and skills to be active producers of technology, rather than just passive consumers. By taking an active interest in technology “children can learn valuable transferrable skills such as logical thinking, problem solving, and collaboration”. Children learn these skills by learning to build a range of games, animations and other programmes. This is a world away from children whose gaming is affecting their GCSE results.

The NCB recommends at the conclusion of its ‘ICT and Me’ report that more research should be made into children’s gaming habits outside of the classroom.

It also suggests that parents set appropriate time limits on gaming. It is clear however, that with the right guidance video games can be utilised to enhance a child’s learning experience. Rik Cross made the point: “Games are a great opportunity for children to think logically, build self-esteem, and collaborate and interact with others. As with everything, this is only the case in moderation, and using appropriate games.” 

It is easy to dismiss playing video games as destructive but by looking behind the headlines it is clear that this is a much wider issue. Some educators may still remain sceptical, but by bringing together learning and gaming teachers can reach out to young people and improve engagement, especially among the children who are underperforming perhaps as a result of over-gaming at home. Games-based learning is a growing sector and with a new generation of children learning how to make their own games it seems likely that the blurring of the lines between work and play will form part of teaching in the future.

This article was originally published in print and online for Education Technology  in December 2015 and was reproduced with the kind permission of the Editor.

Let’s Talk about Sex, Baby

No really, sex and video games. What’s not to love?

Video games are a lot like sex. Both require mental and physical dexterity. They are fairly repetitive, predictable, and both are driven by the offer of rewards for achieving goals linked together by a veneer of narrative. Both leave you feeling drained, keep you up late at night, and teenagers find it hard to stop thinking about either. They are also both the subject of seemingly new, often media-spun addictions. That’s right, I’m looking at you, Tiger.

Video game addiction, like sex addiction, has become a widely used term often bandied around to mean doing something to excess or used as an excuse for lack of self-control. An actual addiction is a serious mental health issue and as such requires the attention of medical professionals and academics. When asked to define addiction, Senior Lecturer in cognitive neuroscience at the University of the West of England Dr Caroline Brown said;

“Biologically, addiction is related to the increased dopamine signalling [broadly speaking, the happiness hormone] that occurs in appetitive behaviour. The dopamine response may increase with each repetition, and in turn it becomes difficult to do without the pleasurable response.”

Putting the Dope in Dopamine

It is this dopamine response that make video games so enjoyable and so-called ‘video game addicts’ fall victim to a pleasure-punishment cycle called Pavlovian conditioning. When we enjoy something we get a rush of pleasure so we do more of it. In contrast when we don’t enjoy something it is like a punishment so we try not to do it again. This is called reinforcement and video games have many ways to reward us for doing well and penalising us for failing. Rewards come in many forms but are usually psychological; collect coins, points, perks, better weapons and gear. Unlocking trophies/ achievements also adds to the warm fuzzy glow we get while playing games. It is like a teacher giving you a gold star. On the other hand games also give us negative reinforcement; you can lose points, fail objectives, or restart the whole level. In team games you can fail the objective on behalf of your friends adding a level of social pressure to the pleasure-punishment spiral. Games would not be worthwhile playing if you simply won everything you attempted and therefore this carrot and stick is fundamental.

Addiction to gaming however is hotly contested by academics. Dr Brown says,

“The concept of addiction to video game playing is debated. Playing games in excess may have underlying psychological causes such as depression, or poor time management, for example.”

In this case, excessive video game playing could be the symptom of a wider problem and not in fact the cause. This is the case for many compulsive behaviours and addictions such as gambling or drug abuse. Not enough research exists to simply dismiss video games as the root cause of all evil and by doing so we might actually be failing those in need of help. It is not a leap to imagine someone who is depressed coming to rely on the dopamine released by playing video games and in this sense playing games has become a self medication in the same way that an alcoholic might turn to drink. However, it seems unlikely that these factors will be taken into consideration when it’s so easy to shake a stick at games themselves. Gamers should take heart that it’s only a matter of time before the witch hunters find another axe to grind. So what will it be? Place your bets. My money is on VR.

This article was originally submitted to the VG247 2015 writing competition and made it to the list of finalists. It didn’t win. That’s next year’s challenge.
Read the winning submission here.