experimentation

Plan now to attend the 2018 Next Generation Learning Spaces Conference — tour USC’s campus!

On 11/09/2017, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, active learning, adjunct faculty, adult learning, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, assessment, attention, Augmented Reality (AR), Blockchain, bots, change, changing business models, collaboration, colleges, communications, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate / business world, Daniel S. Christian, data related items, digital learning, distance education, education technology, educational games / serious games, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, faculty/staff, future of higher education, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), hybrid learning, ideas, innovation, IT in HE, K-12 related, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, learning spaces, learning theories, liberal arts, lifelong learning, maker movement, Mixed Reality (MR), mobile learning, mobile technologies, multimedia, online learning, pedagogy, personalized/customized learning, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, reinvent, smart classrooms, social learning / networks, staying relevant, student-related, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, technology (general), tools, traditional / tradition, trends, United States, universities, user experience (UX), vendors, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, vision/possibilities, visualizing information, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
I am honored to be currently serving on the 2018 Advisory Council for the Next Generation Learning Spaces Conference with a great group of people. Missing — at least from my perspective — from the image below is Kristen Tadrous, Senior Program Director with the Corporate Learning Network. Kristen has done a great job these last few years planning and running this conference.

NOTE:
The above graphic reflects a recent change for me. I am still an Adjunct Faculty Member
at Calvin College, but I am no longer a Senior Instructional Designer there.
My brand is centered around being an Instructional Technologist.

This national conference will be held in Los Angeles, CA on February 26-28, 2018. It is designed to help institutions of higher education develop highly-innovative cultures — something that’s needed in many institutions of traditional higher education right now.

I have attended the first 3 conferences and I moderated a panel at the most recent conference out in San Diego back in February/March of this year. I just want to say that this is a great conference and I encourage you to bring a group of people to it from your organization! I say a group of people because a group of 5 of us (from a variety of departments) went one year and the result of attending the NGLS Conference was a brand new Sandbox Classroom — an active-learning based, highly-collaborative learning space where faculty members can experiment with new pedagogies as well as with new technologies. The conference helped us discuss things as a diverse group, think out load, come up with some innovative ideas, and then build the momentum to move forward with some of those key ideas.

If you haven’t already attended this conference, I highly recommend that you check it out. You can obtain the agenda/brochure for the conference by providing some basic contact information here.

Per Kristen Tadrous, here’s why you want to check out USC:

A true leader in innovation: USC made it to the Top 20 of Reuter’s 100 Most Innovative Universities in 2017!
Detailed guided tour of leading spaces led by the Information Technology Services Learning Environments team
Benchmark your own learning environments by getting a ‘behind the scenes’ look at their state-of-the-art spaces
There are only 30 spots available for the site tour

Building Spaces to Inspire a Culture of Innovation — a core theme at the 4^th Next Generation Learning Spaces summit, taking place this February 26-28 in Los Angeles. An invaluable opportunity to meet and hear from like-minded peers in higher education, and continue your path toward lifelong learning. #ngls2018 http://bit.ly/2yNkMLL

MIT Pilots Digital Diplomas Based on Bitcoin’s Blockchain [Bolkan]

On 10/25/2017, in 21st century, Blockchain, business side of he, colleges, community colleges, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, higher education, ideas, new business models, United States, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

MIT Pilots Digital Diplomas Based on Bitcoin’s Blockchain — from campustechnology.com by Joshua Bolkan

Excerpt:

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has begun offering some students the option to receive digital diplomas through an app, in addition to a traditional paper degree.

Based on Bitcoin’s blockchain technology and integrated with the school’s identity provider, the new diplomas are the result of a partnership between MIT and Learning Machine, a local software company. The electronic credentials were rolled out over the summer and offered to 111 students as part of a pilot program.

Also see:

From DSC:
Some of the largest waves of change that are hitting the beaches of numerous societies throughout the globe are coming from technological changes such as:

Artificial intelligence (which includes things like machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, personal assistants, bots, algorithms, and the like)
Big data and analytics
Robotics
The digital transformation of businesses
New forms of human computer interaction such as virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality
Mobile computing
Cloud computing
The Internet of Things
Wearables
…and more

But in all of these developments, what is common amongst them is that the pace of change has changed. It’s much faster now. In fact, we are no longer on a linear path of slow, steady, incremental changes. We are now on an exponential trajectory – or pace – of change.

This new pace of change is starting to have profound implications for societies, individuals, institutions of higher education, and workforces throughout the globe. Some of these ramifications include:

Profound modifications to the existing workforce; in some cases, staff reductions
New fields, new positions
New skillsets that require highly-educated individuals as well as a massive amount of additional training for existing employees
New methods of learning and the requirement for lifelong, constant learning from here on out
The need to become more responsive and nimble
The need to pulse-check a variety of landscapes to ascertain the best potential strategies to pursue (in light of the potential upcoming scenarios)

Yet the changes aren’t just arising from technological changes. For institutions of higher education, there have been other areas of change that bring with them significant impact, such as:

Decreases in state funding
The increasing costs of healthcare and benefits for faculty, staff, and administrators
Headwinds from demographic-related declines (depending upon one’s geographic location)
Aging facilities and infrastructures
…and more.

Navigating these rough waters is not easy. But the key questions now are:

Is your institution poised to ride the waves of change or is it about to get crushed by these same waves?

Is someone at your organization looking out for these oncoming waves?
That is, is someone pulse-checking a variety of landscapes to ascertain the trends that are developing, trends that could significantly impact your institution and/or your students?

What are some of the ways that your organization could respond to these waves of change to positively impact the following parties?
- Your organization
  What new programs could be offered at your institution? How is the level of responsiveness at your institution to these changes?
- Your students
  Many jobs that your students will have in their futures haven’t even been invented yet. How can you best develop them to be ready for the new, exponential pace of change? How are you helping your graduates who (increasingly) need to come back to your institution and reinvent themselves – quickly, conveniently, and cost-effectively?
- Your employees
  Given all of this change, the professional growth of your own faculty members, staff, and members of your administration is extremely important. How are you looking after their growth?

Would you use the word “innovative” to describe the culture of your organization? That is, is your institution willing to experiment and take some calculated risks? To take no action or risks in the current environment is likely the biggest risk of all.

For institutions of higher education: Some of the ways to respond to the new, exponential pace of change [Christian]

On 10/18/2017, in 21st century, adult learning, Amazon, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Augmented Reality (AR), Blockchain, bots, business, business side of he, career development, change, colleges, community colleges, consortiums, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, data related items, digital learning, distance education, education reform, elearning, emerging technologies, expectations, experimentation, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, interaction design, interface design, internet, leadership, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, lifelong learning, machine-to-machine communications, Michigan, Mixed Reality (MR), online learning, organizational change, pace of change, parents/guardians, personalized/customized learning, platforms, real-world assignments, reinvent, society, staying relevant, strategy, streams of content, student-related, surviving, technology (general), traditional / tradition, trends, United States, universities, user experience (UX), user interface design, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
In Part I, I looked at the new, exponential pace of change that colleges, community colleges and universities now need to deal with – observing the enormous changes that are starting to occur throughout numerous societies around the globe. If we were to plot out the rate of change, we would see that we are no longer on a slow, steady, incremental type of linear pathway; but, instead, we would observe that we are now on an exponential trajectory (as the below graphic from sparks & honey very nicely illustrates).

How should colleges and universities deal with this new, exponential pace of change?

1) I suggest that you ensure that someone in your institution is lifting their gaze and peering out into the horizons, to see what’s coming down the pike. That person – or more ideally, persons – should also be looking around them, noticing what’s going on within the current landscapes of higher education. Regardless of how your institution tackles this task, given that we are currently moving at an incredibly fast pace, this trend analysis is very important. The results from this analysis should immediately be integrated into your strategic plan. Don’t wait 3-5 years to integrate these new findings into your plan. The new, exponential pace of change is going to reward those organizations who are nimble and responsive.

2) I recommend that you look at what programs you are offering and consider if you should be developing additional programs such as those that deal with:

Artificial Intelligence (Natural Language Processing, deep learning, machine learning, bots)
New forms of Human Computer Interaction such as Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Mixed Reality
User Experience Design, User Interface Design, and/or Interaction Design
Big data, data science, working with data
The Internet of Things, machine-to-machine communications, sensors, beacons, etc.
Blockchain-based technologies/systems
The digital transformation of business
Freelancing / owning your own business / entrepreneurship (see this article for the massive changes happening now!)
…and more

3) If you are not already doing so, I recommend that you immediately move to offer a robust lineup of online-based programs. Why do I say this? Because:

Without them, your institution may pay a heavy price due to its diminishing credibility. Your enrollments could decline if learners (and their families) don’t think they will get solid jobs coming out of your institution. If the public perceives you as a dinosaur/out of touch with what the workplace requires, your enrollment/admissions groups may find meeting their quotas will get a lot harder as the years go on. You need to be sending some cars down the online/digital/virtual learning tracks. (Don’t get me wrong. We still need the liberal arts. However, even those institutions who offer liberal arts lineups will still need to have a healthy offering of online-based programs.)
Online-based learning methods can expand the reach of your faculty members while offering chances for individuals throughout the globe to learn from you, and you from them
Online-based learning programs can increase your enrollments, create new revenue streams, and develop/reach new markets
Online-based learning programs have been proven to offer the same learning gains – and sometimes better learning results than – what’s being achieved in face-to-face based classrooms
The majority of pedagogically-related innovations are occurring within the online/digital/virtual realm, and you will want to have built the prior experience, expertise, and foundations in order to leverage and benefit from them
Faculty take their learning/experiences from offering online-based courses back into their face-to-face courses
Due to the increasing price of obtaining a degree, students often need to work to help get them (at least part of the way) through school; thus, flexibility is becoming increasingly important and necessary for students
An increasing number of individuals within the K-12 world as well as the corporate world are learning via online-based means. This is true within higher education as well, as, according to a recent report from Digital Learning Compass states that “the number of higher education students taking at least one distance education course in 2015 now tops six million, about 30% of all enrollments.”
Families are looking very closely at their return on investments being made within the world of higher education. They want to see that their learners are being prepared for the ever-changing future that they will encounter. If people in the workforce often learn online, then current students should be getting practice in that area of their learning ecosystems as well.
As the (mostly) online-based Amazon.com is thriving and retail institutions such as Sears continue to close, people are in the process of forming more generalized expectations that could easily cross over into the realm of higher education. By the way, here’s how our local Sears building is looking these days…or what’s left of it.

4) I recommend that you move towards offering more opportunities for lifelong learning, as learners need to constantly add to their skillsets and knowledge base in order to remain marketable in today’s workforce. This is where adults greatly appreciate – and need – the greater flexibility offered by online-based means of learning. I’m not just talking about graduate programs or continuing studies types of programs here. Rather, I’m hoping that we can move towards providing streams of up-to-date content that learners can subscribe to at any time (and can drop their subscription to at any time). As a relevant side note here, keep your eyes on blockchain-based technologies here.

5) Consider the role of consortia and pooling resources. How might that fit into your strategic plan?

6) Consider why bootcamps continue to come onto the landscape. What are traditional institutions of higher education missing here?

7) And lastly, if one doesn’t already exist, form a small, nimble, innovative group within your organization — what I call a TrimTab Group — to help identify what will and won’t work for your institution.

7 Things You Should Know About Research on Active Learning Classrooms — from library.educause.edu

Excerpt:

Research into active learning classrooms (ALCs)—spaces explicitly designed to support and promote this kind of learning and pedagogy—is expanding. This research provides educators with insights about how best to implement active learning pedagogies and support learners in ALCs. Studying how pedagogy and physical space can influence each other, researchers assess how well design elements work and how they affect learning. Higher education needs to know why active learning works, how it works best, and how these methods can be adopted more widely. Research that shows the efficacy of ALCs helps advance the use of such spaces and informs improvements in the design of learning spaces.

That item also mentions:
A Guide to Teaching in the Active Learning Classroom

7 Things You Should Know About AR/VR/MR — from library.educause.edu

Excerpt:

Augmented reality can be described as experiencing the real world with an overlay of additional computer generated content. In contrast, virtual reality immerses a user in an entirely simulated environment, while mixed or merged reality blends real and virtual worlds in ways through which the physical and the digital can interact. AR, VR, and MR offer new opportunities to create a psychological sense of immersive presence in an environment that feels real enough to be viewed, experienced, explored, and manipulated. These technologies have the potential to democratize learning by giving everyone access to immersive experiences that were once restricted to relatively few learners.

How can you prepare for tomorrow’s blockchain world? [Zetlin]

On 09/20/2017, in 21st century, Blockchain, career development, credentialing, economics, emerging technologies, experimentation, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, learner profiles, learning, lifelong learning, MBA, society, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Blockchain predictions: What it means to you — from enterprisersproject.com by Minda Zetlin
How can you prepare for tomorrow’s blockchain world? TCS blockchain expert Andreas Freund shares perspective

Excerpts:

Blockchain technology will be as revolutionary as the internet, or maybe even the steam engine, predicts Andreas Freund, Ph.D., a senior manager for Tata Consultancy Services‘ blockchain advisory. It’s a bold claim. But in the first part of our two-part interview, Freund makes a strong case that blockchain technology will, at the very least, change our marketplaces and our enterprises in ways that are hard to imagine right now.

Blockchain protocols (best known for enabling cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin or ether) create a distributed ledger in which many nodes on a network each have a record of every transaction that has taken place. (See our recent story, Blockchain: 3 big implications for your company.)

“To really understand and appreciate the value blockchain can bring, you need to understand why it’s a paradigm shift,” Freund says. “You need to look at human beings. What defines us is our physical strength, our intelligence, and our trust relationships. The most fundamental shifts occur when these functions become automated and exponentiated.”
…
When we’re interacting through the blockchain, not only as human beings but as things as well, I can trust the transaction will be executed properly every single time. There’s no chance of tampering or censorship. From a human perspective, I can now trust you without trusting you.”

Right now, people who want to transact with strangers must use a trusted intermediary, as people do when they buy and sell items on the Amazon Marketplace, or buy and sell shares on an exchange, or, say, summon an Uber ride.

It’s more important to understand how blockchain will change many common practices than it is to understand the precise technology behind it, Freund notes. “In the end, how the technology works doesn’t matter,” he says. “TCP/IP enables the internet, although nobody really knows how it works. Without it, we’d still have the walled gardens of the AOL era.”

When it comes to blockchain, he says, “We are still in the AOL era. We have these walled gardens, with many companies experimenting and many public blockchains, but eventually there will be something equivalent to that moment when TCP/IP broke down those walls.”

From DSC:
What happens with blockchain-based technologies and systems could easily impact higher education in the future, especially in the area of credentials and competencies (i.e., did someone really take that class/module/certificate program/etc.?). Blockchain-based techs are likely a part of our future learning ecosystems and next generation learning platforms, and may significantly impact and better support lifelong learning.

Smartwatches Deemed Least Valuable Technology in the Classroom — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly
In our second annual Teaching with Technology Survey, faculty revealed what technologies they use in the classroom, the devices they most value, what they wish for and more.

Excerpts:

Smartwatches may be one of the hottest gadgets in the consumer market — making up nearly a third of all wearables sales this year — but the climate in the classroom is noticeably cooler for the wrist-worn devices. In our 2017 Teaching with Technology Survey, smartwatches came in dead last in the list of technologies faculty consider essential or valuable for teaching and learning. Just 9 percent of faculty called the devices “valuable” (an increase from 5 percent in 2016), and not a one deemed them “essential.” What’s more, 9 percent of respondents considered smartwatches “detrimental.”

When we asked faculty what computing devices were most valuable for teaching and learning, laptops came out on top, considered “essential” by 54 percent of respondents (up from 49 percent in 2016). Workstations (defined as higher-end computers with faster processors, more RAM, more storage and dedicated graphics cards) came in second, followed by all-in-one computers, traditional desktops and detachable tablets. (The lineup was similar last year.)

Google’s new ARCore is Google’s answer to Apple’s ARKit

On 08/29/2017, in A/V -- audio/visual, Apple, Augmented Reality (AR), computer science, emerging technologies, experimentation, Google, innovation, platforms, play, programming, tools, trends, usability, user experience (UX), vendors, by Daniel Christian

ARCore: Augmented reality at Android scale — from blog.google by Dave Burke

Excerpt:

With more than two billion active devices, Android is the largest mobile platform in the world. And for the past nine years, we’ve worked to create a rich set of tools, frameworks and APIs that deliver developers’ creations to people everywhere. Today, we’re releasing a preview of a new software development kit (SDK) called ARCore. It brings augmented reality capabilities to existing and future Android phones. Developers can start experimenting with it right now.

Google just announced its plan to match the coolest new feature coming to the iPhone –from cnbc.com by Todd Haselton

Google just announced its answer to Apple’s augmented reality platform
New tools called ARCore will let developers enable AR on millions of Android devices

AR Experiments

Description:

AR Experiments is a site that features work by coders who are experimenting with augmented reality in exciting ways. These experiments use various tools like ARCore, an SDK that lets Android developers create awesome AR experiences. We’re featuring some of our favorite projects here to help inspire more coders to imagine what could be made with AR.

Google’s ARCore hopes to introduce augmented reality to the Android masses — from androidauthority.com by Williams Pelegrin

Excerpt:

Available as a preview, ARCore is an Android software development kit (SDK) that lets developers introduce AR capabilities to, you guessed it, Android devices. Because of how ARCore works, there is no need for folks to purchase additional sensors or hardware – it will work on existing and future Android phones.

The Benefits of an Innovative Culture at Smaller Colleges — from evolllution.com with Shane Garrison | Vice President of Enrollment, Campbellsville University
Smaller institutions are under more pressure than ever to innovate or collapse—weathering the storm is simply no longer an option for most institutions. This requires leaders and staff across the institution to have a creative mindset, and be willing to experiment and evolve.

Excerpt:

There is the reality that if you don’t diversify, if you fail to be creative, if you fail to try new things, you’re on the verge of folding. In Kentucky, two faith-based colleges folded within a span of about three years, and I think that created an urgency to avoid that fate. We have to be willing to try, create and experiment to survive, and that means doing things that we’ve never done before.

…

Evo: How can an innovative and experiment-focused culture help smaller institutions overcome some of those obstacles?

SG: I think you have to be willing to experiment for short periods of time with strategies that do not fit inside the traditional bubble. For example, for us, our online presence has been fairly strong for about 12 years. However, we had to experiment with placing a good number of full four-year bachelor’s degree programs online, something our university had never done. We had associate programs, we had graduate programs but we had to add bachelor programs online. We did it for three or four years in the experimental phase and noticed these were actually strong and it was building a beautiful pathway between our associate two-year programs and the four-year programs and continuing into graduate programs.

We are experimenting now with an international recruiting partnership and giving it two to three years to see what happens. It has been very successful thus far. This model has created a culture where we can experiment.

Chatbot “Bobbot” has driven 1000’s of potential leads, 10% increase in converting visitors to students

On 08/08/2017, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, business side of he, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, community colleges, emerging technologies, experimentation, Facebook / Meta Platforms, higher education, IBM, Natural Language Processing (NLP), student-related, tools, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Codify Academy Taps IBM Cloud with Watson to Design Cognitive Chatbot — from finance.yahoo.com
Chatbot “Bobbot” has driven thousands of potential leads, 10 percent increase in converting visitors to students

Excerpt:

ARMONK, N.Y., Aug. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that Codify Academy, a San Francisco-based developer education startup, tapped into IBM Cloud’s cognitive services to create an interactive cognitive chatbot, Bobbot, that is improving student experiences and increasing enrollment.

Using the IBM Watson Conversation Service, Bobbot fields questions from prospective and current students in natural language via the company’s website. Since implementing the chatbot, Codify Academy has engaged thousands of potential leads through live conversation between the bot and site visitors, leading to a 10 percent increase in converting these visitors into students.

Bobbot can answer more than 200 common questions about enrollment, course and program details, tuition, and prerequisites, in turn enabling Codify Academy staff to focus on deeper, more meaningful exchanges.

Also see:

Chatbots — The Beginners Guide — from chatbotsmagazine.com

Excerpt:

If you search for chatbots on Google, you’ll probably come across hundreds of pages starting from what is a chatbot to how to build one. This is because we’re in 2017, the year of the chatbots revolution.

I’ve been introduced to many people who are new to this space, and who are very interested and motivated in entering it, rather they’re software developers, entrepreneurs, or just tech hobbyists. Entering this space for the first time, has become overwhelming in just a few months, particularly after Facebook announced the release of the messenger API at F8 developer conference. Due to this matter, I’ve decided to simplify the basic steps of entering this fascinating world.

Five lessons for libraries looking to innovate in the 21st Century [Wilansky]

On 08/04/2017, in 21st century, education, experimentation, ideas, innovation, journalism, learning, learning ecosystem, learning spaces, library / librarians, love of learning, productivity / tips and tricks, society, by Daniel Christian

Five lessons for libraries looking to innovate in the 21st Century — from knightfoundation.org by Laura Sue Wilansky

Excerpt:

In June, Knight Foundation sent a cohort of U.S. librarians from institutions around the country to the Next Library Conference, an annual gathering held in Aarhus, Denmark that brings together library leaders from around the world to discuss innovative programs, services and ideas in the field. 20 U.S. librarians from 11 cities joined hundreds of colleagues who attended the conference from around the globe, from China to Kenya to the Caribbean.

The goal was to spread best practices in library innovation, while helping their capacity to meet new digital age demands. The initiative is part of Knight’s larger work to help libraries better serve 21st century information needs. We believe libraries are essential to addressing information challenges and creating opportunities for communities to engage with information, new ideas and each other. The conference was an opportunity to connect U.S. libraries in order to share practices and approaches being used to attract new patrons around the world, as well as gather insights from them that can help to further inform our strategy.

Here are some of the lessons the librarians brought home…

“We need to focus intently on making our buildings locations for experimentation, innovation, education, recreation and relaxation.”

Penn State World Campus implements 360-degree videos in online courses [Dawson]

On 08/03/2017, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, emerging technologies, experimentation, higher education, innovation, neurodivergent/special needs, online learning, tools, United States, universities, user experience (UX), Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, visualizing information, by Daniel Christian

Penn State World Campus implements 360-degree videos in online courses — from news.psu.edu by Mike Dawson
Videos give students virtual-reality experiences; leaders hopeful for quick expansion

Excerpt:

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State World Campus is using 360-degree videos and virtual reality for the first time with the goal of improving the educational experience for online learners.

The technology has been implemented in the curriculum of a graduate-level special education course in Penn State’s summer semester. Students can use a VR headset to watch 360-degree videos on a device such as a smartphone.

The course, Special Education 801, focuses on how teachers can respond to challenging behaviors, and the 360-degree videos place students in a classroom where they see an instructor explaining strategies for arranging the classroom in ways best-suited for the learning activity. The videos were produced using a 360-degree video camera and uploaded into the course in just a few a days.

Campus Technology 2017: Virtual Reality Is More Than a New Medium — from edtechmagazine.com by Amy Burroughs
Experts weigh in on the future of VR in higher education.

Excerpts:

“It’s actually getting pretty exciting,” Georgieva said, noting that legacy companies and startups alike have projects in the works that will soon be on the market. Look for standalone, wireless VR headsets later this year from Facebook and Google.

“I think it’s going to be a universal device,” he said. “Eventually, we’ll end up with some kind of glasses where we can just dial in the level of immersion that we want.”

— Per Emery Craig, at Campus Technology 2017 Conference

…
“Doing VR for the sake of VR makes no sense whatsoever,” Craig said. “Ask when does it make sense to do this in VR? Does a sense of presence help this, or is it better suited to traditional media?”

Virtual Reality: The User Experience of Story — from blogs.adobe.com

Excerpt:

Solving the content problems in VR requires new skills that are only just starting to be developed and understood, skills that are quite different from traditional storytelling. VR is a nascent medium. One part story, one part experience. And while many of the concepts from film and theater can be used, storytelling through VR is not like making a movie or a play.

In VR, the user has to be guided through an experience of a story, which means many of the challenges in telling a VR story are closer to UX design than anything from film or theater.

Take the issue of frameless scenes. In a VR experience, there are no borders, and no guarantees where a user will look. Scenes must be designed to attract user attention, in order to guide them through the experience of a story.

Sound design, staging cues, lighting effects, and movement can all be used to draw a user’s attention.

However, it’s a fine balance between attraction to distraction.

“In VR, it’s easy to overwhelm the user. If you see a flashing light and in the background, you hear a sharp siren, and then something moves, you’ve given the user too many things to understand,” says Di Dang, User Experience Lead at POP, Seattle. “Be intentional and deliberate about how you grab audience attention.”

VR is a storytelling superpower. No other medium has the quite the same potential to create empathy and drive human connection. Because viewers are for all intents and purposes living the experience, they walk away with that history coded into their memory banks—easily accessible for future responses.

Google’s latest VR experiment is teaching people how to make coffee — from techradar.com by Parker Wilhelm
All in a quest to see how effective learning in virtual reality is

Excerpt:

Teaching with a simulation is no new concept, but Google’s Daydream Labs wants to see exactly how useful virtual reality can be for teaching people practical skills.

In a recent experiment, Google ran a simulation of an interactive espresso machine in VR. From there, it had a group of people try their virtual hand at brewing a cup of java before being tasked to make the real thing.

Addendum on 7/26/17:

A New World: VR and AR Tech Developments — from er.educause.edu by Emory Craig and Maya Georgieva

Want to Build a Culture of Learning? You Need to Embrace Failure [Petrone]

On 07/20/2017, in adult learning, business, career development, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, experimentation, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, strategy, training / L&D, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Want to Build a Culture of Learning? You Need to Embrace Failure — from learning.linkedin.com by Paul Petrone

Excerpt:

Six questions that determine how your company really feels about failure
It’s great to say your company welcomes people experimenting and failing. But does that actually happen in practice?

To assess how your company really feels about failure, Andreatta suggests asking yourself these six questions about your culture:

Do people admit when they don’t know something or ask for help?
What happens when someone makes a mistake or fails? Are they teased or shamed or are they encouraged to look at what happened and try again?
When people make mistakes or challenge ideas, do they ultimately get sidelined, demoted or red?
Do people admit their mistakes and take responsibility for fixing them or do they blame others?
Do managers and leaders share stories of how they took risks or recovered from a failure?

“All of the amazing training programs in the world won’t help if people don’t feel safe enough to stretch and grow,” Andreatta said.

More Than Just Cool? — from insidehighered.com by Nick Roll
Virtual and augmented realities make headway in courses on health care, art history and social work.

Excerpt:

When Glenn Gunhouse visits the Pantheon, you would think that the professor, who teaches art and architecture history, wouldn’t be able to keep his eyes off the Roman temple’s columns, statues or dome. But there’s something else that always catches his eye: the jaws of the tourists visiting the building, and the way they all inevitably drop.

“Wow.”

There’s only one other way that Gunhouse has been able to replicate that feeling of awe for his students short of booking expensive plane tickets to Italy. Photos, videos and even three-dimensional walk-throughs on a computer screen don’t do it: It’s when his students put on virtual reality headsets loaded with images of the Pantheon.

…nursing schools are using virtual reality or augmented reality to bring three-dimensional anatomy illustrations off of two-dimensional textbook pages.

Also see:

Oculus reportedly planning $200 standalone wireless VR headset for 2018 — from techcrunch.com by Darrell Etherington

Excerpt:

Facebook is set to reveal a standalone Oculus virtual reality headset sometime later this year, Bloomberg reports, with a ship date of sometime in 2018. The headset will work without requiring a tethered PC or smartphone, according to the report, and will be branded with the Oculus name around the world, except in China, where it’ll carry Xiaomi trade dress and run some Xiaomi software as part of a partnership that extends to manufacturing plans for the device.

Facebook Inc. is taking another stab at turning its Oculus Rift virtual reality headset into a mass-market phenomenon. Later this year, the company plans to unveil a cheaper, wireless device that the company is betting will popularize VR the way Apple did the smartphone.

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