There has been a lot of buzz around virtual reality and augmentedreality (VR and AR) and how they’ll revolutionize eLearning. Will they? Canthey really enhance eLearning? Or have we heard this buzz before?
More importantly, can VR and AR actually get learners toremember more, to add skills, to improve their performance—our big, overridinggoals—or are they just two more buzzwords that will eventually get dumped onthe trash heap of eLearning buzzwords that didn’t deliver on an impossiblepromise?
And most importantly, are VR and AR ready for prime time?Can you use them now, and can you produce cost-effective and learner-effectiveeLearning with the tech available today?
Let’s find out.
What are VR and AR?
First, we need to understand what virtual reality andaugmented reality are. In a way, VR and AR are cut from the same technologycloth but are far different in implementation. Both have elements of 3-D andare meant to give the viewer a simulacrum of some sort, even though both aredifferent implementations of tech. Both require some sort of display device.
To the end user, VR and AR show very different faces andhave very different uses. VR still requires the viewer to wear a “face brick,”as some engineers call it. VR creates a total immersion into a designed world.It can be based on the real world with video, or an imaginary world that ismore like animation. The problem with VR is that, although it’s a very powerfulmedium, the viewer can have trouble totally accepting the “concept” of realitywith the display sitting on their face. But sometimes it works, and works well.However, it’s a fact that there’s a big, opaque mask hanging in front of yourface. The question is: Can your training be effective in this reality?
AR is more of a data delivery system that augments the reality of the learner (oranyone else who can use AR). AR needs some sort of glasses or other projectionmechanism. Augmented reality is in one sense easier than VR and in another moredifficult. Think of the late, but not lamented, Google Glass. It put data infront of the user’s face. It looked like it was floating there. Google Glasswas just too limiting in what it could display, so it was not useful except asan attention-getter that showed you when you got a text or email. You couldn’tinteract with it right there. You had to get to or use a different device tointeract. A lot of the training we create will explore how to use the AR infront of our faces. Whatever heads-up display technology we wind up using toaugment reality is going to make a difference in the knowledge we have at ourfingertips. It’s not easy.
AR and VR are coming. They are an unavoidable part of ourfuture. There will be (and are now) topics that are wholly appropriate foreLearning, or any kind of learning or information display, for that matter. Thecaveat here is: Don’t look at either one as a panacea, and don’t look at beingable to do VR or AR on a reasonable budget anytime soon. There are a lot ofequipment hurdles, hardware hurdles, and software hurdles to overcome first.
Practical use of VR and AR in eLearning
If there’s no real way to do this for now, is it practicalto use? Absolutely. In eLearning, we’ve seen a parade of tech march by us inthe last 20 or so years. If you’re old enough to remember what things were likein 1997 and really think about it, we’ve come an amazing distance.
But are virtual and augmented reality practical in eLearningnow, in 2017? Yes, if you have a large training organization. Implementingeither VR or AR in a course is a labor- and equipment-intensive project thatrequires lots of resources in both equipment and people. If you have theresources, then you’ll be able to truly think about when VR or AR isappropriate for the course you’re designing or developing. In a smallerorganization, or in a department of one, you’ll have a great time thinking ofapplications but a hard time using these applications in your training—unless,of course, you have the budget to outsource the AR or VR development.
What are some practical uses of VR and AR? It’s easier todescribe and think about what uses AR can have and how you can put it to useimmediately. In many ways, AR is mind-boggling in its potential application. Hereare a few examples: Think of a person assembling anything. They could use AR toget a magnified view of the parts they’re working with. Or think of a stocktrader who needs to simultaneously be talking to someone and looking at thedata flowing across their screen. Think of a salesperson talking to a clientface-to-face with all the sales figures and information they need floating infront of their eyes. The list of potential practical applications of AR is endless.
VR is a different story. The fact is, it’s harder to see howVR might apply itself in the workplace. Training on objects is an appropriateuse of VR, especially when the objects are all around the person being trained.One application might be showing an environment someone would be immersed in. Butit’s a very, very different thing than AR. In fact, they don’t have a lot incommon except that VR might incorporate AR. But it’s going to be harder tothink of and create applications that will incorporate AR into VR.
What tools do you need to create VR or AR?
This is easy for VR. You need a camera or cameras that canshoot a 360-degree sphere around you. There are several cameras that are builtfor this purpose, and there are also several rigs available that you can use tomount a whole bunch of GoProcameras that cover 360 degrees. Nikon makes a camera that does this as a singlecamera. It’s a little easier to edit single-camera video because you can useone stream to make your edits. With multiple cameras, you have to synchronizethe video from each camera and edit from there. Surround audio is a differentproposition if there are different sounds from the back and the front. Forediting, Adobe Premiere Pro is now capable of syncing and editing VR video, but it’s stilla task that is best done with lots of time—especially for rendering the videoso it can be played on a VR device sitting on your face—and you still need tocreate sound in a 360-degree surround sphere. Audio programs are capable ofthat as well, but they still take a lot of time to make audio sound realistic.And VR by its very definition needs to be realistic.
AR, on the other hand, only takes two things to create: agreat programmer who can take different data sets and put them together for adeveloper to implement them for the viewing device. The device can be a phoneor tablet, but the real AR will come when there are things that can projectlike a heads-up display does in front of our eyes.
The future
In some ways, the future is here. Google Glass paved the pathfor us, but it was an early implementation of what AR can do. We talk about VRand AR sometimes as if they were indeed ready for us to implement into ourprojects tomorrow. A good reality check shows us that we’re several years awayfrom having a real, cost-effective path to making VR and AR available to most learningaudiences out there. Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, is on record saying that hebelieves AR will be bigger than VR. And he may just be right on this. VR won’tbecome a platform that’s usable in mainstream applications until we can get ridof that thing hanging on the front of our faces. Holodeck, here we come!
From the editor: Start immersing yourself in the evolution of VRand AR technology this month with The eLearning Guild
It took years for mobile and cell phones to turn intosmartphones, two or three more years for eLearning designers and softwarevendors to figure out where those smartphones fit into strategies for learningand performance support in the workplace, and two or three more years yet formobile learning to become an accepted channel for learning and development. VRand AR will have their own evolutionary arc and will also require several yearsto become routine practice.
Learning SolutionsMagazine and The eLearning Guild were key players in moving mobile learningforward to become routine practice. This magazine has been bringing you articles to help you relate VR and AR to learning and learning strategy and toinstructional design, as well as to some of the challenges developers face. Wewill continue these in even greater depth all during July, and there will bemore of this type of material through October.
At the end of July, The eLearning Guild is presenting Realities360in San Jose, California (July 26 – 28). The program will show you whatAR, VR, and other enhanced reality technologies can do for learning. Realities360is specifically designed to allow you to immerse yourself in thesetechnologies, and to engage in conversations that enable you to put thoseexperiences into the context of the work you do in training and development. Readthese session descriptions to gain an idea of the breadth and depth of thisconference:
- How VR Is Changing the Future of Content, from Maxwell Planck, technicalfounder of Oculus Story Studio.
- BYOL: Low-Cost, High-Impact AR Experiences, from Ann Rollins, seniorinstructional strategist at GP Strategies, and Myra Roldan, seniorinstructional designer at Amazon. (BYOL stands for Bring Your Own Laptop®. Thisis a hands-on session.)
- VR in the Enterprise: What Works and What Doesn’t, from Marco Faccini, chiefcommercial officer and CLO of Immerse Learning.
- What Learning Theories Teach Us About Learning in VR, from Hugh Seaton, CEO of Aquinas Training.
