Eric Wooldridge, an additive manufacturing professor at Somerset Community College (Kentucky), advocates for low-cost virtual reality (VR) as a powerful tool to improve student learning.
“I want it [VR] to be the go-to for training that we can’t afford,” Wooldridge said, listing computer numerical control manufacturing and semiconductor chip fabrication as examples of extremely expensive technical processes that students can learn through VR simulations.
The low-cost VR platform that he and David Bosquez, the VR project manager, have devised with the support of an Advanced Technological Education (ATE) grant from the National Science Foundation gives educators in all disciplines remote access to free software and lessons on how to make their own educational VR content.
This reduces the cost of adding VR in classrooms to just the expense of headsets, which currently run about $500 each. Wooldridge points out this expense is on par with the cost of two college textbooks.
“You can get by with a headset that’s tethered to a computer. You can get by with a simple laptop and a simple headset. A few hundred dollars is all it takes to actually get into VR,” he said during a presentation at the 2024 ATE Principal Investigators’ Conference last month.
Educators who want to access the free VR professional development and software assets should go to the course portal. There, educators with no background in coding or game design can learn VR skills at their own pace and develop VR modules with guidance from the Somerset team. The modules that participants develop for their particular instructional needs are then available for others to adopt and adapt.
“The overall goal is for us to create content that everyone can use and have people out there that can build it. That’s what allows us to turn around and start answering the workforce problem. Because now again, I can go to the poorest of the poor or the richest of the rich, and everyone can have access to the same training software just because these headsets only cost about 500 bucks,” Wooldridge said.
Moving forward
In May, the National Science Board recognized Wooldridge and Sheri McGuffin, the STEM coordinator at AdvanceKentucky, with the prestigious Science and Society Award for spreading low-cost additive manufacturing skills across Kentucky. About 5,000 college and secondary school students and 250 educators in Kentucky have learned 3D-printing skills through the Mobile Additive Manufacturing Platform for 21st Century STEM Workforce Enhancement, an ATE project known as Mobile AMP.
During a recent interview, Wooldridge said he and his colleagues are applying what they learned from Mobile AMP to their work on two current ATE projects that focus on VR: Improving Technician Skills in Advanced Manufacturing with a Low-Cost Virtual Reality Platform and Resource Collaborative for Immersive Technologies (RECITE). He is also the co-principal investigator of Collaborative Research: EPIIC: Developing an Eco Engine Jumpstart Kit.
Among the things they have learned is that success adding VR is influenced more by educators’ desire to use the technology and less by their technical or academic backgrounds.
Below, an example of a VR exercise to read and analyze blueprints with various objects located on Somerset Community College’s VR course portal.
For instance, Angel Rodriguez, a professor in the science department at Broward College in Florida, heard Wooldridge speak at the 2023 ATE Principal Investigators’ Conference and began working his way through the VR course during his January 2024 winter break. His first VR creation was a simulation of an X-ray lab where pre-nursing students in his anatomy and physiology course could “pick up” and examine the 206 bones in a human body.
To help other instructors in other disciplines learn about VR, he created a simulated museum with sculptures and other works of art to show how the technology could be used to teach art history. He acquired all the assets he placed in the VR museum for free from sources that the Somerset project identified.
He was happily surprised when the college’s computer technology department used his VR museum for part of the faculty’s welcome back at the beginning of the fall semester. They reused it again in October with a Halloween-themed outreach entitled “Who’s afraid of VR” to show people how easy it is to learn VR and use it to teach.
“So the process of creating the content — once you learn the basics — is very straightforward. The limitation is how much time you have and how creative you want to be. And so, to me, in that sense, it’s an ideal tool,” Rodriguez said.
While acknowledging that it takes time to learn to use the VR tools, during his conference presentation Wooldridge offered two examples of VR modules that the project has developed and that are already saving faculty time. One teaches students how to use a measuring tape. It’s a basic skill that employers and faculty report many college students do not know. And Wooldridge contends this VR module, which was adapted from content created by the Center for Aviation and Automotive Technological Education Using Virtual E-Schools, facilitates students learning on their own, outside of class time.
Another VR module teaches students how to use an oxygen/acetylene-cutting torch. The hazardous nature of the tool requires faculty to work one-on-one with individual students. With the VR module to introduce the steps for safe operation, faculty can focus on checking for mastery. Students who used VR to practice using a simulated torch reported they were more confident when it came time for them to handle a real torch.
“Never underestimate the power of confidence in education. It’s the difference between someone asking you the right question in the classroom and not. It’s the difference between someone who’s not normally in this kind of field getting into this kind of field. These are the things that matter. So, the confidence-building that occurs with VR simulation is sort of something that we’re just starting to understand, but is a powerful, powerful tool,” Wooldridge said.
