In one of the subjects that I teach, we talk about current and future trends in education, and especially as they relate to learning design. One of the topics that we spend a bit of time exploring is Extended Reality, which is the catch all term that I use to encapsulate Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Virtual Words – embracing the well known continuum of different levels of virtuality. It’s interesting because I am sure that, for more than a decade, some form of XR has featured prominently in the Horizon Report as an up-and-coming educational technology – and yet, it’s never really taken hold, at either university or school level. Of course, there are examples, and case studies, but it hasn’t really taken hold the way things like Google Classroom, for example, have.
There are lots of reasons for that, but I think there are probably two main ones: the first is expense, and the second is the lack of usable training material, resources, and assets for teachers to make use of. Both of these are, (and I am conscious that I am sounding a little bit like a techno-optimist here), beginning to change – and something that I am pleased to see is that they are beginning to change across all levels of the continuum. For example, what are ostensibly gaming platforms like Minecraft are beginning to make inroads into educational virtual world spaces. And Google Cardboard and the like are increasingly affordable options for Virtual Reality. Occupying the middle space of augmented reality are a wealth of new tools, some inspired by games like Pokémon Go, but offering more fully featured ways of engaging students – such as Adobe Aero, ARKit on the iPad and others.
While uptake hasn’t exploded, there is growing interest amongst the educators with whom I speak about how they might use the devices already present in classrooms to leverage these features. Of course, the normal rules in educational technology adoption apply here: teachers need to be careful to navigate past gimmicks and instant gratification, and instead make decisions about adoption based purely on the value for education and learning. In addition, we need to be mindful of the promises of some of these platforms, and contrast them with the realities of what is realistic and likely in the classroom. This is related to the third point: bearing in mind the limited training and professional development available to teachers in this space, and their own limited amounts of time due to an ever-increasing workload, any use of XR needs to be quick, simple and easy – and inexpensive. A final point here: while XR has significant advantages in terms of accessibility, in that it can allow student to take part in activities that they might otherwise be excluded from, it is important to plan with accessibility in mind from the start. That is, think carefully about how students who are visually impaired, for example, might still be able to take part in activities making use of VR goggles.