“We should be careful to get out of a learning experience only the wisdom that is in it.” (Mark Twain)
Have you ever lost your keys or forgotten where you parked your car? Many have, and it can be a struggle to recall information and find our way. If only we would have considered putting a GPS tracker on our keys or taken a picture of where we positioned our cars.
Using tools and techniques to help learners find their way in a maze of curriculum outcomes also requires careful consideration.
Have a Plan for Your Destination
Instructional design is the systematic planning of a lesson to ensure student learning is maximized. Master teachers meticulously orchestrate instruction so that learning comes to life. The essential tool for effective teaching and, therefore, quality learning is the lesson plan or guide. Outstanding teachers consider what the student is doing before, during, and after the educational activity has been delivered.
VR instruction is no different than regular face-face-instruction.
Teachers can not assume that putting on a headset and entering a VR application will guarantee deep learning. Virtual reality experiences can be awe-inspiring and magical. To ensure emotional and intellectual cognitive development in this new immersive medium, stakeholders benefit from having a sense of direction provided by detailed VR lesson guides.
VR lesson guides offer a map or framework for introspection and give participants a provocative reason to enter a VR application. These guides aim to enhance the relationship with the VR application to expand a user’s world view through contextual/conceptual thinking and self-reflection. Careful consideration is taken regarding what the user considers before, during, and after the VR experience to ensure participants are maximizing their learning and unlocking new perspectives.
From Road Maps to Treasure Maps
We can’t reach a destination if we don’t know where we are going. Traditional maps take users from point A to point B in the fastest, most efficient route possible.
However, learning should not be reduced to such a shallow way of thinking. Being quick or slow is not the goal of education, seeing relationships and thinking deeply is what is essential. Teachers and schools need to value creativity, discovery, and foster multi-approaches to learning pathways over linear paths that emphasize speed, memorization, worksheets, and tests. Lesson guides should be more like treasure maps.
Treasure map-like lesson guides for VR enable students to access playful experiences that engage in big ideas. VR lesson guides emphasize deep thinking through conceptual understanding. In VR lesson guides, students are challenged to hunt for concepts that can be slippery, allusive, and harder to catch. VR lesson guides focus on having students struggle with big ideas and take them on an experiential journey that may lead them through multiple pathways.
What are the Key Components to Effective VR Lesson Guides?
What to consider before putting on the VR headset?
What to Consider While Inside the VR headset?
What to Consider After the VR Experience?
“Kids these Days”
Today’s students have grown up with technology. They are what we might call “digital natives”. Growing up surrounded by technologies like the internet, Ipads, and Iphones have created a unique persona that should be taken into account when designing learning experiences. These students approach the world differently. Digital native students want experiences that can be: customized and personalized, scrutinized by having the ability to see behind and scenes, have an element of play and entertainment, have quick access to information with very little waiting time, and have collaboration built to form and craft relationships. These characteristics require careful consideration for teachers who aspire to design lessons and learning experiences that capture the attention and interest of digital natives. Such demands require new powers of design to ensure learning is personalized, interrogative, entertaining, efficient, and collaborative. Immersive VR can give digital natives the experiences they crave. And, with the help of a well-crafted VR lesson guide, teachers can help them navigate their journey toward meaningful learning.
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