Creativity with Virtual Reality: Oculus Go headset

Posted on by jamesflitcroftmq
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Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) is an emerging technology that replaces the real world with an entirely digitally recreated one (Kiryakova, Angelova, & Yordanova, 2018). IVR environments respond to users’ physical movements in real time, which creates the illusion that they are “interacting with and being immersed in the virtual world” (Tussyadiah, Wang, Jung, Claudia tom Dieck, 2018, p. 141). Using IVR, students can engage in rich experiences that may not otherwise be possible due to their dangerous or infeasible nature.

Oculus Go

I experienced IVR with the Oculus Go, which is a wearable headset that has been specially designed to provide IVR experiences. The Oculus Go is a highly portable unit and can be purchased for under $300 (AUD). While wearing the headset, I immersed myself in a hammerhead shark encounter using the National Geographic VR program. I found this to be an engaging experience, especially as I was able to control my perspective throughout.

Example of the types of visions I encountered using the Oculus Go

Fostering Creativity

IVR fosters creativity by providing students with completely different perspectives and experiences, which is likely to expand their thinking and encourage innovative ideas. Jacobson and Holden (2005) suggest that IVR focuses students’ attention on the subject matter, which assists in developing the depth of understanding often needed for creative thinking. One of the most effective ways to foster creativity using IVR, however, is to have students design their own IVR world. This provides students with the freedom needed to incorporate their unique ideas and perspectives into their work.

Create your own VR world using this link

Potential Limitations

IVR provides a highly personalised user experience, which can make it difficult for teachers to provide students with the opportunity to work in a collaborative environment (Kiryakova et al., 2018). Additionally, IVR is often associated with motion sickness, particularly when products have high latency (Kavanagh, Luxton-Reilly, Wuensche, & Plimmer, 2017). Although the Oculus Rift has low latency in comparison to other VR products, I experienced a small amount of motion sickness after using the product for a short period.

Additionally, it is unlikely that teachers will have the resources or skills to personally create IVR content for specific topics, which might make it difficult to align IVR learning activities with syllabus content. Nevertheless, a single widely-available IVR experience could be used for multiple syllabus topics, subjects and stages. For example, the hammerhead shark experience discussed above could be used for Year 7-10 science (marine life), geography (oceans) and commerce (ecotourism).

A finally limitation is the lack of control the teacher has over the experience. The highly personal nature of the experience makes it difficult for teachers to monitor students’ use of the product and to provide assistance to them when needed.

References

Jacobson, J., & Holden, L. (2005). The virtual Egyptian temple. World Conference on Educational Multimedia Hypermedia & Telecommunications, Montreal, Canada.

Kavanagh, S., Luxton-Reilly, A., Wuensche, B., & Plimmer, B. (2017). A systematic review of virtual reality in education. Themes in Science and Technology Education, 10(2): 85-119. doi: 10.1007/s10055-019-00379-9

Kiryakova, G., Angelova, N., & Yordanova, L. (2018). The potential of augmented reality to transform education into smart education, Journal of Association for Information Communication Technology, Education and Science, 7(3): 556-565. doi: 10.18421/TEM-11

Tussyadiah, I. P., Wang, D., Jung, T. H, & Claudia tom Dieck, M. (2018). Virtual reality, presence, and attitude change: Empirical evidence from tourism. Tourism Management. 66: 140-154. doi: 10.1016/j.tourman.2017.12.003

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Published by jamesflitcroftmq

5 thoughts on “Creativity with Virtual Reality: Oculus Go headset”

  1. Hello James,

    I agree that VR headset does not provide much support in collaborative activities. It is a very one person immersive opportunity.

    However, due to the cost of Occulus Go/Rift, I doubt that school will invest such technology for the entire class. However, to successfully foster creativity (and not from a user end consumer), Co-Ed Space provides the opportunity for students to create their own virtual world constrained by the syllabus outcomes. Students can then upload it into their phone and experience VR that way.

    Regards,
    Jasmine

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  2. Hi James,
    Thanks for a neat post! Your experiences with using Oculus Go sounds fantastic, and I thought your reflection of being able to change perspectives when using IVR was interesting given how Dede (2009) note this as a major affordance for learning. I thought the examples of using the National Geographic Hammerhead Shark video was well considered, and displayed how one IVR experience can be used in a variety of KLAs.
    I’m curious to hear more of your thoughts about how IVR fosters creativity when positioned as a user. I agree that developed students’ depth of understanding is necessary for paving the way for higher order cognitive functions such as create, but I wonder what other creative possibilities a tool like Oculus Go offers for creativity. Based on my experiences in the tutorial, I found myself having to engage in creative practices including exploration and experimentation when situated in virtual worlds, which I enjoyed as a user! I’ve also played around with IVR art apps that allow you to paint in 3D space.
    I thought your pedagogical limitations were very interesting. I agree that IVR is very much so an individualised experience, which makes it difficult to work collaboratively – especially if headsets are limited. With that in mind, I also agree that teachers are faced with challenges of managing students when they are immersed in VR experiences. If you’re interested, I found a great paper by Johnson-Glenberg (2018) that has some great recommendations on how IVR should be implemented in the classroom to overcome the challenges you mentioned and effectively foster learning: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2018.00081/full
    Cheers,
    Amalina.

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    1. Hi Amalina,

      Thanks for the comment.

      I think that VR is probably one of the more difficult technologies to foster creativity with. In addition to what I initially wrote about creativity, I belive that having students design their own VR is probably another effective method. If you haven’t tried this website (https://cospaces.io/edu/) I would recommend it, but it sounds like you have tried something similar.

      The article you posted was interesting. I particularly like the idea of having teachers and VR creators co-designing applications – surely this would leave to VR products that are more relevant to syllabus content, which could overcome the limitations we previously both mentioned.

      James

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  3. Hi James,

    I thought your discussion on the limitations of VR was very interesting. I have experienced the painstaking search for a VR video that fits my lesson perfectly (or at all). I completely agree that the everyday teacher may likely not have the resources needed to create quality VR videos. I wouldn’t know how to approach this at all. Perhaps teacher training here would be helpful, as VR is becoming more and more affordable to use in the classroom.

    However, I enjoyed your innovative solution to the issue of a lack of content. This could be a creative fix for sure.

    I would’ve enjoyed reading more about how VR fosters creativity as it’s something I would like to learn more about. To me, VR seems to lack in flexibility.

    Sophie

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