Unit 2 - VR Skills Development
Unit 2: VR Skills Development
2.1 Developing your Learning Plan
Before jumping into teaching with VR you need to develop your own comfort level with using the technology. While VR is easy to use, it takes some time and practice to become comfortable with using the controllers to navigate virtual environments and interact with objects in those environments. Another concern is that VR can sometimes cause motion sickness in new users but over time as you use the technology that motion sickness will lessen or disappear altogether. With these things in mind it is helpful to develop a learning plan to make sure that you block out the time needed to acquire the skills you need and to make sure that the time you are spending is directed effectively to learning the skills you will need.
Reflect on Past Experiences Learning New Technology
I like to think that learning to use VR is a lot like learning to drive a car. You need to understand what each of the controls do in order to get you to move appropriately and get you where you want to go. With a car you need to know what the steering wheel does, where the gas and break pedals are and how to shift gears. With VR you need to understand how to use the joystick movement, how to teleport and which buttons and triggers perform what actions. Once you have this basic understanding you then need to practice manipulating these controls and develop these skills to the point where using them becomes second nature. So your learning plan needs to incorporate the time and practice necessary to learn how to interact within the virtual world and then to become fluent in putting those skills into action.
When developing your plan, it may be helpful to reflect on past times that you have tried to learn a new technology.
What steps did you take to learn that technology?
How much time did you need to spend learning and practicing with that technology to become proficient with it?
What types of resources did you use to aid your learning, did you watch videos, read about it, have a friend guide you as you learned?
Did you block out specific times to practice or did you take a less structured approach?
Did you experience any stress or anxiety when learning that technology, what steps did you take to mitigate those feelings?
How did you feel when you realized you were successful with learning the technology, what did you do to celebrate that accomplishment?
Things to Consider
Here are some planning suggestions and estimates on how much time you will need to devote to become comfortable with using VR.
As mentioned above motion sickness can be an issue when starting out with VR. In the beginning plan short sessions of 15-25 minutes each time you use it. This will allow you to see whether you might be experiencing motion sickness and it will allow you to develop some tolerance. Over time you will be able to spend more time in your headset without experiencing issues. If you do experience motion sickness check out 10 Tips to Prevent VR Motion Sickness.
Use a distributed practice approach for VR skills development. This means planning shorter sessions spaced out over time. This will help minimize motion sickness and improve retention for the skills you are developing.
Block out specific times over a several week period for your VR training. This will make sure that you stay on track with your skills development and that you do not let other competing priorities take time away from learning the skills you need to get comfortable with using VR.
Specific tasks and time estimates:
Creating account and setting up your headset - 45 min - 1 hour (don't forget to charge your headset before doing this)
Running through the tutorials - 25-45 minutes
Exploring applications and broadening your skills - 5-6 hours
As you are building your skills, you can move onto the subsequent units in this course. It would be helpful though to make sure that you have completed the setup and tutorials and have explored two or three other VR applications. This will help ground the following units in your own personal experiences and make those materials more meaningful.