May 27, 2019

Reality Check (4)


Little or No Change. In my undergraduate classes at the University of Colorado-Denver I started a process of surveying each incoming cohort about their experience with virtual reality. [Building imagination] The findings thus far from my first two semesters clearly align with my experience interviewing past cohorts and knowledge of in-practice teachers, as well. Here are my current findings:
  • 42% of UCD students have tried VR, which is up from 35.7% last year. Of course, that means 58% had never used it, prior to taking my classes.
  • Only 3.5% of my students have used virtual reality in an way associated with their university coursework. What happened to the energy of virtual reality in the educational marketplace? It’s dismal.
  • And, oh yeah, about 15.8% of my students get uncomfortably ill when viewing virtual reality. That makes sense, supported by worldwide vision health research. [Education that WOWS]
Remember, in order to keep our blog readers from falling off the feared precipice of despair, I have deliberately embedded words of hope throughout this series, as seen in the top paragraph, in [bracketed italics]. These are expressions that literally shout the promise and potential of virtual reality, while counterbalancing the bad news.  These words are not just taken magically from the air, but consist of actual text snatched from the VR-related exhibit hall booths and sales literature at a recent ed-tech conference, ‘designer’ phraseology that help sell VR to tech-hungry educators. 

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