My Experience Using the HTC Vive for Improving Learning Outcomes

During my junior year in high school I had reached the peak of my dejected attitude towards education. Ever since I was a young child I have been an avid reader and I consider myself an autodidact--when I find something fascinating I will try and absorb all I can about the subject.

It is no secret that the public education system in American is a system purported to prepare citizens for their transition to adulthood in a democratic society. Despite its supposed purpose, I , among many others have grown up despising the school system. Not learning itself, but the methods used to educate the youth.

I'm sure many of my teachers over the years recognized my hatred of the master/slave dialectic style of teaching encountered in public schools. It can teach students to be subservient and follow orders, but does a poor job of instilling values of self-sufficiency and confidence.

One of my teachers, my Digital Electronics instructor, not only recognized this energy but worked to transmute negativity into positive creation. This class was one of my first introductions to Boolean algebra and the concepts of building circuitboards. I was on the track to pursuing English in college and was presented with a year-long challenge that proved very difficult to me especially due to my lack of confidence in mathematics.

My instructor, Mr. B, is someone I admire very much. He was extremely technical and rigorous but never failed to captivate his audience with brief forays in the middle of lessons to reference and consider works of Plato and Aristotle in the frame of the topic specifically at hand.

It was at the close of a lesson when the philosophical discussions' tide turned its face on itself and began to consider the system of education. Due to my instructor's expertise in Nanotechnology he was no stranger to emerging technologies and the impact they can affect. So when a few of my peers and myself proposed a system of learning suited for the students learning the content, utilizing Virtual Reality(VR) technology, Mr. B was propelled to encourage and offer us guidance to achieve this implementation.

My summer consisted of writing up documents and proposals to my school districts Educational Foundation. A few months later I was notified of the approval of our grant: several thousand dollars for the purchase of a VR ready computer(which we built ourselves) and an HTC Vive.

The following year consisted of much study of Unreal Engine 4, quite an encyclopedic software. Programming each aspect of typical reality proved to be a difficult and extensive task. By year's end we were required to present our Minimal Viable Product to the community, which consisted of an Anatomy and Emergency Care simulation(s).

In a later post I will recapitulate my experience with my team, Educational Virtual Reality Technologies(E.V.R.T.), during the year long Engineering Design & Development capstone research course. If there is interest, that is...