Tag: University of Manitoba

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

Taking a Moment to Catch My Breath and Figure Out Where I’m Going Next

So, as I have mentioned, I haven’t been blogging much lately, because I have been so busy with my full-time paying job as an academic librarian at my employer, the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. Now that the annual rush of training hundreds of students on how to use the university libraries effectively and efficiently has ended, my attention turns to my other big project: specifying hardware and software for a virtual reality lab, which we are calling the XR Lab (the XR stands for eXtended Reality, a sort of umbrella term used for virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, and what Apple is now calling spatial computing).

The purpose of this lab is to provide virtual reality and augmented reality hardware and software (both VR/AR experiences and content creation tools) to University of Manitoba faculty, staff, and students to support their teaching, learning and research. I have been working on this project for the past two and half years, and it is a weird feeling to finally see the computers removed from the room which we have designated as the future home of the XR Lab, in preparation for the necessary room renovations (which are to start soon, and are supposed to be completed by spring next year):

The former computer lab which will be renovated to create the XR Lab

In the meantime, I have been cross-training another Libraries staff member on the hardware and software which I am proposing for the XR Lab. In other words, if (God forbid!) I should get run over by a bus, the idea is that somebody will be able to give VR/AR demos in my place. There is a lot of information which has to be shared! For example, our last training session included a section on how to set the correct interpupillary distance (IPD) on both the Vive Pro 2 and Meta Quest 3 headsets (thankfully, the Apple Vision Pro automatically scans your eyes and sets the IPD automatically!).

Just another day in the office: the Vive Pro 2 VR headset is sitting on the Windows desktop PC it is tethered to on the right, the Meta Quest 3 is to the left near the back of the table, and the Apple Vision Pro is sitting at the centre, near the front of the table.

There’s a lot of balls to juggle, and I must confess that I often feel exhausted and even overwhelmed at times. When I come home from work, the last thing I want to do is write a blog post! So my formerly feverish blogging pace has unfortunately slowed to a crawl. Also, my blogpost viewing stats are way, waaay down. Where I used to get 1,500 views a day, now I’m lucky to reach even one third of that:

Partly it’s because the metaverse hype cycle has crested and crashed (and everyone has jumped on the artificial intelligence bandwagon), and partly it’s because longform blogs seem to be an increasingly outdated—even quaint—means of communication in the current short-attention-span era of Instagram pictures and TikTok videos.

Which means I seriously need to pause and think about what direction in which I want to take this blog, and who I want my audience to be. One of the things that I have always said is that, in a blog that literally has my name in the URL, anything I want to talk about here is on topic! However, I am wondering if perhaps I have cast my net a little too broadly, and it might be time to narrow the focus of the RyanSchultz.com blog somewhat.

I don’t think that I will cease blogging completely; I still feel the need to write, but I need to reflect a bit on what I want to write about, and why. I still do get a sense of accomplishment when I craft a well-written blog post on a topic that I care about and, as always, I read and appreciate all the comments and feedback I receive on my blogposts!

So please bear with me as I figure out where I am going next with (gestures broadly) all this.

It can be difficult to choose the next direction in which to go (Image by Rama Krishna Karumanchi from Pixabay)

IMPORTANT HOUSEKEEPING ANNOUNCEMENT AND APOLOGY: Why I Am Putting The RyanSchultz.com Blog on the Back Burner for the Foreseeable Future

When you’re up to your ass in alligators, it’s hard to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp.

—Modern proverb, possibly Cajun

A picture of the equipment setup in the temporary virtual reality demonstration room in Elizabeth Dafoe Library, with a Meta Quest 3 headset (left, the white headset), and the Vive Pro 2 headset with the “wand” controllers (centre front, the black headset). You can see on the wall-mounted computer monitor behind them a view of the Sansar world No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man – 2nd Floor, a gallery experience by the Smithsonian.

So, as you might have noticed, I haven’t been blogging very much lately (again).

There are a few reasons why, chief among them that I have been through a library move. The building which houses the university science library where I work full-time has been closed, and both the staff and collections have been moved to other locations. The building is going to be completely gutted and renovated over the next 2-1/2-to-3 years. Moving a large library is a MAJOR undertaking, folks! And just days after the move in June, as luck would have it, we hosted a science librarians conference, which had attendees coming from all over North America. The last month has been hectic! I haven’t even had an opportunity to unpack most of my moving boxes in my new office!

But another reason why I haven’t been writing much lately is that the virtual reality lab project I am working on is starting to ramp up. While plans for the necessary room renovations for the future home of the XR (Extended Reality) Lab are proceeding (with a projected ready date of January 2025), I have been given a smaller room in the main arts and humanities library to set up a temporary virtual reality demonstration room, equipped with a wireless Meta Quest 3 VR/AR headset, plus a Vive Pro 2 PCVR setup, attached to a Windows PC with a good graphics card (see image above).

I have been spending most of last week and this week previewing and reviewing a curated selection of apps and experiences, and drafting a “menu” for both the Meta Quest 3 and the Vive Pro 2, which I will be giving to Libraries staff so they can decide what VR/AR experiences they would like to have. Most of them are brand new to virtual reality and augmented reality, so I still need to work out the best procedures for giving these demos, and cleaning the hardware between users, helping them avoid VR sickness, etc.

In fact, I have spent so much time hopping in and out of various VR apps to draw up the menus, that I have often given myself VR sickness, something which surprised me, as a virtual reality veteran! I have been using a wide variety of headsets since January 2017, and I am usually able to be in VR for two hours at a time!

I discussed this at the first meeting of the University of Manitoba VR/AR/MR/XR Group (a new group I helped organize, for U of M faculty, staff, and students working in virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, extended reality, spatial computing—and whatever other umbrella term they come up with next!), and the head of the computer science department told me that, in his opinion, part of the problem is that many newer app developers don’t put the same amount of care and attention into designing affordances that the earliest VR apps had. He has a good point.

In other words, some VR/AR developers are just throwing stuff together using the new and improved content creation tools, without really doing proper testing. I do think that there is some merit in this idea, based on my own experience over the past two weeks. So I am finding that I am having to take breaks from all my VR/AR activity until the nausea passes. And it has reminded me that I definitely need to keep VR sickness top of mind when giving demos!

Along with off-the-shelf apps (educational and non-gaming, although some apps might have a gamification component) from both the Quest store (for the Meta Quest 3) and the Steam store (for the Vive Pro 2), I am also including in my menus some examples of educational worlds which people have created in various social VR platforms. Some examples are the NASA Apollo moon-landing exhibit in Sansar, The Universe microscopic-to-macroscopic experience in Resonite, and the Ancient Athens Acropolis and Agora worlds, which have been moved from AltspaceVR to VRChat. There’s a lot of content out there! I want Libraries staff to be able to experience as much of it as possible, to get a sense of the possibilities of this technology. (Right now, I am focused on free apps and experiences, but eventually I will have a budget to purchase software.)

So, I have been extremely busy, and sometimes I do feel a bit overwhelmed. Quite often, when I come home from work, the last thing I want to do is sit in front of a computer, and especially put on another virtual reality headset! So my trusty Valve Index, with the Knuckles controllers, is quietly collecting dust on my computer desk at home.

So I apologize for the lack of blog posts lately, but as you can see, I’m trying to keep a lot of plates spinning at the moment! I am going to have to put this blog on the back burner for the foreseeable future. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Kandyan Plate Spinners (CC BY-SA 2.0 Antony Stanley, from Flickr)

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!