spotLITE workshop: Acceptance and Use of VR in Teaching

In our fourth spotLITE workshop, Gabriel Jones (Digital Education Service) shared insights from the first year of his LITE Fellowship.

Gabriel Jones presenting

With the opening of the HELIX innovation hub, the University’s Digital Education Enhancement (DEE) teams going from strength to strength, and an increasingly online world, it’s an exciting time for virtual reality (VR) at the University.

Gabriel’s spotLITE workshop gave participants the opportunity to learn more about VR, explore potential barriers and corresponding solutions, and even give it a go themselves. He shared insights from his Fellowship research, including staff attitudes to VR, barriers to adoption and use of VR, how to address these barriers, and the role DEE teams can play.

Gabriel’s survey of 153 respondents from all 7 faculties of the University found that a large proportion have never used VR, with some using it only once. Very few were currently using it on a monthly, weekly or daily basis. However, a large proportion of respondents felt that using VR could enhance the quality of their teaching and improve student engagement. So, there is a clear need for educators to be informed about possible use cases of VR in teaching and how to overcome barriers to its use.

A word cloud created by participants during the workshop

While survey respondents agreed that access to the HELIX innovation hub and the support of local DEE teams made it more likely that they would use immersive VR in their teaching, they still felt that it would be challenging and could present potential issues for accessibility and inclusivity. There was also uncertainty about whether they would be able to learn how to use VR, if students would be able to understand its use, what support was available for using VR in teaching, and its pedagogical relevance.

After Gabriel’s research had provided some context for VR use at the University, workshop participants had the opportunity to try out an immersive learning experience – using either a screen-based presentation, or a head-mounted VR display. They went on a virtual field trip of Ilkley Moor, interacting with videos along the way to learn more. This VR experience was created by the School of Earth and Environment, in a collaboration between subject matter experts, the local DEE team, and the Univesity’s Production and Creative team.

A workshop participant using the screen-based presentation

After the VR demonstration, Gabriel shared challenges cited in quotations from his Fellowship research’s semi-structured interviews, and participants summarised these and shared potential solutions, rating the solutions on axes of effort versus value.

In addition to the establishment of regular XR symposia in HELIX, Gabriel is planning some virtual reality inductions for staff who want to know more about its applications in teaching, with the opportunity to try VR in a meaningful context. These will be run by DEE teams in collaboration with HELIX.

If you’d like to know more about this or any other aspect of Gabriel’s Fellowship project, you can send him an email: G.J.Jones@leeds.ac.uk.