Mental & Physical Health In The VR Classroom
When applying VR to education, right now it is a given that there are more questions than answers, even when talking to experts. The amount of variables that erupt when an emerging technology is added to a classroom is compounded by the difficulties created by the human factors of education. What this means is that for a teacher using emerging technology like VR, you are going to have to think and engage with concepts that are difficult and maybe unknowns to not only other innovative teachers, but experts in the field.
One such issue is the mental and physical health issues that comes from being in VR for prolonged periods of time. This week I went live with a large scale amount of Oculus Quests with a few classes at my school. I was so excited, but nervous about the practical issues facing VR instruction. I worried about how much time it would take for students to get on the device. Would they be able to find the right app? Would they enjoy themselves? The answer all those worries were simple: around seven minutes to get them out to students and on the device, of course they were able to find the app, and for the large part they enjoyed the activity. However, what I did not think about were some of the larger issues with mental and physical health. One class was a bit smaller and therefore each student had their own device and more time in the VR experience. Before class I took a quick poll on how many of them had experience with VR and most had done something like Google Cardboard, and a few had brief encounters with Oculus, but nothing in depth. I got them on the devices and and building their designs in Tiltbrush. However, one student stated that VR made her ill and did not want to do it. This posed a difficult moment: if the student is required to complete work on the device, what could be alternative assignments for a health issue like this? So as the assignment was more about experiencing new ways of creating, I let her decide what the others would create. It worked out, but her position ended up being representative of a larger student experience.
After 25-30 minutes in Tiltbrush creating 3D logos, I told the students to take off the device and return them to our tech room. Students were immediately disoriented and complained about the light. Now this could be brushed off as a case of students overreacting to a new experience, but it continued until the bell rang. One student said that she continued to feel like she was in VR until late in the day and that is played some tricks with her equilibrium. Another student said that she got a headache afterwards and did not feel great about the experience. None of them blamed me, mostly because I kept reminding them to take the sets off and take a break, but it was still hard to hear a student have negative physical effects. Despite these effects, most said that they would be more than willing to take part in VR again, but with more breaks.
On the other end of the spectrum, I had a few students who deeply desired to have more time in VR and it bordered on obsession. Their first question when they got to class was if we were doing VR again today, and when I responded “No” they were very frustrated. Again, this could be just a case of students loving the experience and wanting to do it again and more, but if the behavior continues at the detriment of their other classwork, what does that mean? As a society, we already have a good picture of technology obsession and addiction and it large scale effects it can have on mental health; I worry that by adding another deeply experiential technology like VR to our classrooms we might be encouraging, at least on accident, more technological addition and possible problems with mental health. However, as the technology is emerging in the classroom, the effects may only be known long after large scale technological adoption programs.
Like a proud parent, I have been sharing VR with a lot of the teachers in my building. It is new, it is shiny, but also it has a lot of great applications for classroom engagement and learning that could be revolutionary. I was speaking to a physical education teacher explaining to them a recent app, Oh Shape, that presents players with different “walls” that they have to conform the shape of their bodies to throughout the game. I thought, and still think, this would be a great way to gamify a physical education classroom using VR. The teacher smiled, said yes, then said how gross the devices would become due to all the different sweaty foreheads they would come in contact with throughout the day. Although this is just an evidence truth of VR, I had never considered it. As we all deal with the collective anxiety surrounding coronavirus, questions like his should come more to the forefront in educations VR. How do we protect our students when they are a shared device strapped to their head? What are the mental health issues that can occur from using VR in the classroom? How can districts/schools prepare roll outs of VR devices to avoid issues with physical and mental health? Although I do not have the answers, as of yet, I am curious what others are doing with these devices and how they are preparing to handle these challenges or how they have already. As always share any ideas with me at @teacherwinters on Twitter or at matt@teacherwinters.net.
