Tag: Education

ANNOUNCEMENT: My One-Year Research and Study Leave Project

Photo by Jaredd Craig on Unsplash

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium—digital or otherwise—that either reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions. While many think of OER as referring predominantly to open textbooks, OER includes a vast variety of resources, such as videos, images, lesson plans, coding and software, and even entire courses. In order for a resource to be considered open, it must fulfill the following criteria:

• Modifiable: The resource must be made available under an open license that allows for editing. Ideally, it should also be available in an editable format.

• Openly-licensed: The resource must explicitly state that it is available for remixing and redistribution by others. Some open licences may include restrictions on how others may use the resource (see: Creative Commons).

• Freely Available: The resources must be available online at zero cost.

—definition adapted from Introduction to Open Educational Resources, Open Education Alberta.

Not long ago, on my 62nd-birthday blogpost, I wrote:

…although it is not official official (and I really should wait until I get the official letter from university administration, which I was told should happen about the end of March), the University of Manitoba Libraries has approved my application to take a one-year Research and Study Leave (at full salary) to start later this year, where I am relieved of my regular academic librarian duties, and can work on a special project. Academic librarians at the University of Manitoba are members of the faculty union, and just like the professors, we have the right (and the opportunity) to pursue research. Again, more details later. I’ve only mentioned this to a couple of people so far, but I think I can share that much detail at this time.

Well, I am very happy to announce that it is now official official: I have formally been approved to take a one-year research and study leave, at full salary, from my employer, the University of Manitoba Libraries, to pursue a special project.

What is that special project, you may ask? Well, I’m just going to quote from my approved application form:

During my Research Leave, I will create a comprehensive Open Educational Resource (OER) addressing a critical gap in scholarly literature: a rigorous, pedagogically-sound introduction to virtual worlds, social virtual reality, and the metaverse, with particular emphasis on applications in higher education. This project builds directly on my expertise as the writer of a popular blog on the topic over the past eight years (https://ryanschultz.com), as well as the owner and moderator of an associated Discord server, representing over 700 members who are actively using various metaverse platforms. The research phase will involve a literature review, plus case study analysis of specific metaverse platforms. The OER will consist of several modules, including topics such as: the history of the concept of the metaverse; how the current wave of generative AI will impact the metaverse, etc. This project requires a dedicated research leave because the rapidly-evolving nature of the field requires intensive, concentrated research and focus. Released under a Creative Commons license, this resource will serve UM faculty and the global educational community, providing a freely-adaptable foundation for teaching, learning, and research.

Yep, that’s right folks, I am taking a full year off from my regular academic librarian duties to write a book about what I know best, and have been blogging about for many years now: virtual worlds, social VR, and the metaverse! (Throwing in a little bit about artificial intelligence and generative AI, as it applies to those topics.)

My leave runs from July 1st, 2026 through to June 30th, 2027, and the best part of it is, since it’s about the metaverse, I can literally work from anywhere: at home in Winnipeg, while visiting the rest of my family in Alberta, on the beach at Bora Bora (highly unlikely, although the Apple Vision Pro provides a suitable substitute in a pinch!), etc. The only rule is you have to vacate your current office at the university for whoever is filling in for you while you’re away on research leave, which seems pretty reasonable to me. However, I will be borrowing some of the VR/AR equipment which I had purchased on previous years’ travel and expense funds (T&E funds for short; essentially, extra money allocated to faculty and librarians for things like conference travel, books, computers, etc.):

Because part of this research work will involve social VR, I will have to move some virtual reality equipment purchased on previous years’ T&E funds from my office in Elizabeth Dafoe to my home. This equipment will be returned to my office after my Leave ends.

Oh, and I also have to promise that I will come back to my job at the University of Manitoba Libraries after my leave ends, which is fine, since I am planning to stay until I retire at age 65, in January 2029. This will, of course, be the last research leave I take before I do retire.

Best of all, after my OER is complete, anybody can use it for teaching, learning, and research purposes, including editing. remixing, and repurposing it (the exact rights will depend on which Creative Commons license I choose to publish it under).

Watch for updates on this project as I get closer to July 1st. Stay tuned!

Photo by Windows on Unsplash

Entering the RadyVerse: A Look at Five VR and AI Projects for Training Healthcare Workers at the University of Manitoba’s Rady Faculty of Health Sciences

One of the virtual reality labs being used to train nursing students in the College of Nursing at the University of Manitoba

As many of my readers already well know, I am the computer science and agriculture librarian at the Jim Peebles Science and Technology Library at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and I have been writing about “news and views on social VR, virtual worlds, and the metaverse” (as the tagline of the RyanSchultz.com blog states) since July 31st, 2017. I have now been actively and avidly reporting on this space on my blog for almost seven years, sharing news and events in the rapidly-evolving metaverse!

So it was that I had already written on my blog (albeit somewhat in passing) about the University of Manitoba’s College of Nursing, which has been training new nursing students using the UbiSim software since the Fall 2022 term. Here’s a one-minute YouTube video about that work:

However, today I wanted to give you all an update on some newer innovations in the use of VR (and AI!) in healthcare education at my employer, the University of Manitoba.

Yes, the RadyVerse launch even had a cake! Carbs take priority, people!!! 😉

One month ago, on Friday, March 15th, 2024, I attended a special afternoon event located at the University of Manitoba’s Bannatyne Campus (the downtown, health-sciences-focused campus, next door to Winnipeg’s main hospital complex, the Health Sciences Centre). This event was the official launch of a new initiative of the Max Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, called the RadyVerse. According to the announcement:

The RadyVerse is an exciting initiative of the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences that combines virtual reality (VR), artificial intelligence and machine learning to create immersive and controlled simulations for students, educators and clinicians. The integration aims to empower an interprofessional community, promote collaboration and enhance skill development in a risk-free setting.

Dr. Nicole Harder speaking at the RadyVerse launch event (with Dr. Lawrence Gillman, seated)

In an article published in UM Today, the University of Manitoba’s online newspaper, one of the speakers at the launch described the purpose of the event, and the benefits of using VR in the College of Nursing programs:

Dr. Nicole Harder, associate dean, undergraduate programs and professor in the College of Nursing,  and Mindermar Professor in Human Simulation, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, described the launch event as a “technology fair” that will give faculty, staff and students the opportunity to participate in interactive demonstrations.

“People will be able to try on the VR headsets and step into the immersive world. We’ll also have monitors where we can screencast and show others what they see in the VR, and how this will be used as an educational tool,” Harder said.

“VR has been used in other universities for some time, but not to the same extent. In the College of Nursing, it is embedded into our curriculum.”

The college recently expanded its VR simulation training to its programming in The Pas and Thompson through a partnership with the University College of the North. This allows students from different parts of the province to work together on a simulated clinical case in one virtual room.

As more disciplines become involved, interprofessional teams will not even need to be in the same physical space when collaborating, Harder said.

“VR is a great tool for learning clinical decision-making, problem solving, empathy and communication.”

One of my Libraries colleagues tries out the UbiSim nursing simulation software
Kimberly Workum of the College of Nursing, at the Bodyswaps demonstration workstation

The launch event had five stations intended to showcase how the faculty is using virtual reality and artificial intelligence to educate and train the next generation of healthcare professionals: doctors, nurses, pharmacists, rehabilitation therapists, etc. U of M faculty, staff, students, reporters, and the general public were invited to try out the technology for themselves, and get a taste of how it works. The five stations were:

  • The previously mentioned UbiSim VR software, used for training nurses in simulated but realistic nursing scenarios, where students can practice their skills within a safe and controlled environment;
  • Bodyswaps, another initiative of the College of Nursing, which provides experiential, soft-skills training (e.g. how to talk with patients and family members in various scenarios);
  • An artificial intelligence (AI) tool called OSCE GPT, which uses a specially-trained large language model (LLM) to simulate patients, in order to allow healthcare professionals to practice their patient interview skills, and give them feedback on how to improve it;
  • Lumeto, social-VR-based roleplay software for up to 4 users at once, used to train healthcare workers in interprofessional collaboration skills; and
  • Acadicus (a VR program for education which I had written about in 2019 on my blog), which is being used by Dr. Lawrence Gillman. According to the UM Today article:
People could try out the Acadeicus software, being used by Dr. Gillman’s team to train doctors

One of the stations will be led by Dr. Lawrence Gillman, associate professor of surgery at the Max Rady College of Medicine and director of the Clinical Learning and Simulation Program at Bannatyne campus.

Gillman has a crisis-based simulation and trauma resuscitation program in development that he will soon be using to teach his residents. At the launch, he’ll demonstrate what trainers and learners will be able to do.

“This VR program is basically a playground where you can create your own sim lab in a virtual environment. You can create whatever scenarios or places you want, and people can participate together in person, or even from a distance,” Gillman said.

“Basically, we create medical crises that people can practice in and then make mistakes in simulation rather than real life.”

A user tries out Lumeto

I visited all five workstations, and had an ample opportunity to test out most of these applications first-hand, and speak to my U of M coworkers about these projects. In fact, you can even catch a glimpse of me standing behind Dr. Gillman as he guides a user through the Acadicus software, in the video attached to this CTV News report of the RadyVerse event (see the red arrow in the screen capture I took from that video):

(I didn’t even know about this until a friend who watched CTV News told me!)

There’s just so much exciting stuff going on right now! There are so many VR initiatives taking place on campus, oftentimes in isolation, which is a shame. For example, I wonder how many of the healthcare professionals at the RadyVerse launch were aware that the UM Libraries is working on setting up a VR lab for faculty, staff, and student use (an initiative which is now well underway). And that the Department of Computer Science also has plans to set up a VR lab for its students. And I believe that the university’s Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning is also working on something to do with VR…like I said, there’s a lot going on.

Therefore, I hope to be able to use some of my own “soft skills” and abilities to help set up improved communication channels and venues at the university, so we can all learn from each other as we beaver away on our separate projects and programs! I believe that there is much so in-house expertise and experience which we can share with each other. I know that I would benefit from this, and I suspect others would as well. We can all learn from each other.

The RadyVerse event was a fantastic opportunity to learn more about some of the other virtual reality and artifical intelligence work taking place at the University of Manitoba, and I hope to report on future developments in this exciting edtech as it rolls out across campus. These are exciting times to be a VR and AI enthusiast at the University of Manitoba!

Editorial: Why Am I Buying a Meta Quest 2 Wireless VR Headset—After Swearing I Would Boycott Meta Hardware and Software Forever?

I will soon be the owner of a shiny new Meta Quest 2, as shown here in this screen capture from the Meta website

Longtime readers of this blog will know that I have, over the years, developed a well-founded aversion to Meta (the company formerly known as Facebook), its business practices based on surveillance capitalism, and its products and services.

For me, the final straw was when then-Facebook-now-Meta did an about-face, and insisted that users of its then-Oculus-now-Meta virtual reality hardware had to set up accounts on the Facebook social network in order to use the devices (more on that in a moment). I angrily responded by giving away my Oculus Quest 1 to my brother’s family, and upgrading my trusty Oculus Rift to a Valve Index headset using SteamVR. I was DONE with Meta, and I was willing to vote with my feet (and my wallet).

So, it might come as a surprise to some people, to learn that I have decided to purchase a shiny new Meta Quest 2 wireless virtual reality headset. Why did I do this? Several points, which I will take one at a time.

Well, first and foremost, Meta blinked and backtracked after much criticism; you no longer need to set up a Facebook account to use the Meta Quest 2 (although you still have the option to link your Facebook or Instagram account to your Meta account, if you so wish). Instead, you set up a new Meta account for your device, as explained in the following YouTube video from six months ago:

It is now possible to have up to four Meta accounts per device, with one as an admin account, and you will be able to share some (not all, some) apps between Meta accounts using a new app-sharing feature. Note that Meta is still dragging its feet in setting up systems for use in business and academic circles; its “Meta Quest for Business” program is still in beta test with a (U.S. only) waiting list, a rather mystifying decision given the push Meta is already trying to make with Horizon Workrooms for corporate users. Then again, Meta seems to be just generally flailing (and failing) with its still-recent pivot to the metaverse, so who knows?

Second, as you may remember, I am still working on a project to set up a virtual reality lab within the University of Manitoba Libraries. While my original proposal was to purchase and install four high-end PCVR workstations using HTC Vive Pro 2 tethered headsets, we are now looking at offering faculty, staff, and students a wider variety of headsets for use in their teaching, learning, and research activities.

It’s probably not wise to purchase only one kind of VR hardware, which leaves you vulnerable if a company decides to shut down (although this is highly unlikely in the case of both HTC and Meta!). Best not to put all our eggs into one basket; life tends to throw all kinds of unexpected curveballs at you!

One unintended consequence of the coronavirus pandemic is that I had several successive years’ worth of travel and expense funds carried over and built up, some of which had to be spent by a certain deadline, or I would lose the money. So part of that funding went towards a brand-new work PC with a good graphics card, and an HTC Vive Pro 2 Office Kit, which of course is one of the models we are looking at purchasing for the virtual reality lab. However, I still had some money left over that I had to spend soon, and I decided to also buy a Meta Quest 2 as another testing unit, since we are considering also using that device in the virtual reality lab.

Third: while hunting around for easy-to-use, introductory demonstrations of virtual reality for those coworkers who have never experienced VR before, like Felix & Paul Studio’s excellent Introduction to Virtual Reality, I discovered to my great dismay that many apps were only available for Meta devices, and not available on SteamVR at all!

Unfortunately, some VR apps are exclusive to Meta VR headsets

In other words, some of the programs which students might want to use force us to purchase headsets on which they can run. This “walled garden” approach is antithetical to setting up an academic VR lab, where ideally we should be able to run any app on any headset. However, we have little choice, given the way the marketplace is currently structured (and especially given Meta’s outsized influence, with a little under 20 million Quests of various kinds sold, which makes it by far the most popular VR headset).

The University of Manitoba’s School of Nursing recently opened the first virtual reality lab on campus, and they are only using Meta Quest 2 headsets. This lab is currently training nursing students using UbiSim software, with plans to expand its offerings over time (more info here on Mastodon). And the U of M’s Computer Science department is also planning to use Meta Quest 2s in its planned VR lab.

The VR lab at the University of Manitoba School of Nursing

In other words, you can choose not to dance with the 900-pound gorilla in the room (i.e., Meta), but it will severely limit your choice of dance partners! And that is why, despite my lingering antipathy towards Mark Zuckerberg and his company’s business practices, we will likely be buying a number of Meta Quest 2 headsets to add to our planned virtual reality laboratory at the University of Manitoba Libraries, starting with a single test unit purchased on my travel and expense funds for work.

Wish me luck; I am off on yet another adventure!

Uncommon Realities: The 16th Annual Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education (VWBPE 2023) Conference Takes Place in Second Life, March 23rd to 25th, 2023

The theme of VWBPE 2023 conference is Uncommon Realities

Once again this March, the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference (VWBPE for short) will take place in Second Life, running from March 23rd to 25th, 2023. According to the EventBrite description of the conference:

This year, we celebrate Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education’s 16th Annual International Conference on Education in Virtual and Augmented Reality. The main conference takes place March 23-25, 2023, with immersive experiences happening two weeks before and after the main event.

Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education is a global grassroots community event focusing on education in immersive virtual environments. This open conference is organized by the education community to provide an opportunity to showcase the learning that takes place using virtual and augmented environments. Educators and content creators alike are encouraged to attend, present, and take part in this discussion of collaborative deeper learning and co-presence in virtual worlds and games.

To the best ability possible, VWBPE provides educational and networking opportunities that are relevant to educational curriculum development utilizing virtual environments and “best practices”.

These include

  • helping to build community through extension of learning best practices to practical application of those ideas and techniques;
  • providing networking opportunities for educators and the communities that help support education; and
  • providing access to current innovations, trends, ideas, case studies, and other best practices for educators and the communities that help support education.

Over 1,200 people from 30 countries attended our last conference in March 2022. In just the past several years, over 200 hours of video footage has been captured and has been made available free to the academic community in addition to other video broadcasts, with thousands of views.

Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education is a meaningful way for presenters to share their research and experience about the rich learning systems in virtual worlds and games. This free online conference is produced entirely by volunteers.

According to their mission statement, taken from the VWBPE website:

This open conference is organized by the Second Life community to provide an opportunity to showcase the learning that takes place using virtual worlds. Everyone is encouraged to present, attend and take part in this discussion of collaborative deeper learning and co-presence in virtual worlds and games…

Over 2,000 attendees representing 90 countries participate in 150-200 online presentations including theoretical research, application of best practices, virtual world tours, hands-on workshops, discussion panels, machinima presentations, and poster exhibits. You do not have to be a formal academic to participate.

While the VWBPE conference proceedings are apparently published as the Journal of Virtual Studies published by Rockcliffe University Consortium, my Firefox web browser threw up a security warning when I tried to access the journal’s webpage:

Indeed, Rockcliffe University Consortium (a gold-level sponsor of VWBPE, and a primary organizer of the conference) is a “university” which, as far as I am aware, exists only within the virtual world of Second Life, as opposed to an accredited, real-world university. According to their website:

Rockcliffe is a registered non-profit C-Corp in the United States, however we are not a 501(c)3. Structurally, we are organized along the lines of a B-Corp. The organization is made up completely of volunteers. The entire organization is a collection of global SOHO [small office/home office] locations tied together through a common technical infrastructure that serves as a proxy for a brick and mortar location. While the majority of our volunteers are from the United States, Rockcliffe also [has] volunteers based in Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and Australia.

While those who seek the reassurance of academic rigour and scholarly structure might turn up their noses at a self-proclaimed Second Life “university” with a glitchy journal website, I would remind you that the current organization also embraces those virtual world educators and researchers who might otherwise feel excluded from a professional, academic conference. And I can attest that I have attended some truly excellent presentations at previous VWBPE conferences over the past 15 years, such as this 2021 talk by Dr. Marie Vans about social VR.

So I would encourage you, who perhaps might never have heard of the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference before, to consider attending this year. The final conference agenda has not been published yet, but you can already register for free for VWBPE 2023 via EventBrite. VWBPE 2023 organizers are also looking for volunteers (more information and a volunteer sign-up form are here).

You can visit the VWBPE website for more information. If you need to set up a Second Life avatar to attend VWBPE 2023, just visit the Second Life website and click on either of the places indicated by the red arrows (or just go here):

Setting up a Second Life avatar/account is easy

And if you should need a little help getting your Second Life avatar looking presentable and fashionable while spending as few Linden dollars as possible, well, Auntie Ryan has got you covered. 😉

See you at VWBPE 2023!