Using Virtual Reality in Education for Adulting 101

There’s a lot of potential for virtual reality in education. Many times, on social media and casual conversation concerning education, I hear the idea tossed around both seriously or jokingly that there should be a class called Adulting 101 where we teach young ones the basic everyday life responsibilities like paying bills and taxes, performing car maintenance and services, basic cooking knowledge, the list continues.

The argument also stands on whether the school system should be responsible for these lessons or if parents should hold the responsibility of teaching the necessities of adulthood. How do we ensure that we provide for our youth an equal opportunity to these life lessons? Not every parent may fully understand how taxes work. Not every school may be able to provide an additional course in this field. Plus, how can it be taught in a matter of a few weeks or even a few months?

Disclosure before we continue.

This is a thesis paper that I wrote for a course called “Virtual Environments” at Savannah College of Art and Design back in 2018. I am publishing it onto my blog as I own the writing and have credited the quotes and research using the APA format (the best I could in blog form).

Also, this blog has affiliate links. This means that, at no extra cost to you, if you so choose to participate in some of the learning opportunities here, we at Kyrabe Stories may receive a commission as gratitude from the partnering companies. Thank you sincerely for your support and for your desire to learn and grow! I hope you enjoy the blog!

Because Virtual Reality is vastly expanding within our Digital Age, this is what I propose:

What if we created a VR adventure game that has real-life obstacles embedded into the gameplay? Through the immersive use of Virtual Reality and the collective community of massive multiplayer interfaces, we have an opportunity to create a fun interactive game that focuses on teaching our younger generation the fundamentals of common everyday life necessities that may not be taught in a school environment and may possibly be overlooked as an educational necessity within a home environment. 

For many of us, does this sound like a familiar experience at some point in school:

We enter a classroom where we are presented with a variety of new information for a specific topic. Upon receiving this information, we must study the facts, equations, and so on within a certain timeframe of that specific course; normally we do this for multiple courses at once. 

Either weekly, biweekly, or twice at the middle and end of the course, we must “learn” all this new information for a test that will determine our intelligence of the subject. Finally, we end up forgetting a huge amount of this new information right after the course is completed. Through this memorization game, we are conditioned with the flawed misconception that “when faced with a problem to solve, good learners solve it quickly, the first they try or soon thereafter. If you have to try over and over again, this is a sign that you are not very good at what you are attempting to learn.” 1

This dilemma might not appear to be that big of a deal for topics that we think we won’t need to use on an everyday basis. A personal example of this would be trying to learn Trigonometry using the formulas of sine, cosine, and tangent back in high school. I could not understand these equations, nor could I relate them to anything that I would possibly need it for in my personal life. After the course ended with a tiresome crawl towards a passing grade, so too ended any attempt of understanding these problems. My theory was, “if I’m never going to use it, then why learn it?”  

Fast forward seven years.

I decided to give programming a shot. Oh, the dread I felt when my professor wrote out the math problems that once gave me nightmares in high school was deep. Immediately, I regretted not taking the time to learn these equations. However, there was something different about applying them to actual situations. Back in the high school math class, the main activities we did were to memorize the problems then get tested on drawing out the graph (which I earned multiple red-pen “x” marks on). If we messed up enough times, we failed.  

In the programming class though, I got to artistically experiment with the equations without the fear of failure looming over me. Through that entertaining experimentation of programming texture designs and the idea of embracing mistakes as a part of the learning experience, I gained more of a stronger understanding of Trigonometry than I ever did just from memorizing the equations. From this hands-on experience, I also was able to better understand James Paul Gee’s argument that “good video games allow players to be not just passive consumers but also active producers who can customize their own learning experiences.”2

The engagement versus the memorization.

Maybe a concept like that is something that’d be beneficial to incorporate in combining an immersive learning experience disguised as a video game. Pushed even further, we expand the wonders of virtual reality in education. Now, what if we were to apply that experimental and creative experience to an immersive video game? As Kurt Squire pointed out in Video Games and Learning:  

“Video games are unique in that they are participatory. Games are complex systems that invite us to play with them. They are dynamic in that they unfold over time; most games evolve in response to our choices. Many games that are of interest to educators are simulations. They aren’t perfect simulations, and it’s not always clear what they are a simulation of, but very often they try to create some experience for the player. The real learning occurs through the transformations we have through playing and then engaging in related practices (viewing gaming forums, playing with friends, and so on).”3 

Take for instance a game like Dragon Age: Origins.

The player can choose among three different races and six possible backgrounds that reflect one’s chosen race. From that background, we live out this character’s adventure by advancing different skills and interacting with the characters in the game. In the beginning, the challenges are simple with a few monsters to fight and basic choices to choose from.

As the game progresses, we must think more critically. Our choices can have either everlasting benefits or consequences throughout the rest of the game. Do I teach my mage how to master healing or does the team need her to be a warrior in animal transformation? Do I side with the Werewolves over the Dalish Elves or vice versa, or is my charisma high enough to promote peace between both? By increasing my skills in certain areas compared to the strengths and weaknesses of my team, will it give us the highest chance of defeating the Archdemon? 4

These questions might not be the typical things we ask ourselves while grocery shopping or visiting a car dealer. They are questions that require us to think critically based on each player’s unique circumstances.  

Different learning experiences.

Unlike in school where we are tested to memorize information without the permission to cross-reference or to collaborate with fellow thinkers on a problem (because this would constitute as cheating), role-playing games (RPG) enforce the reality that not every situation is going to be a clear-cut, right or wrong, pass or fail scenario. In fact, many role-playing games like Dragon Age: Origins encourage multiple playthroughs through different scenarios. As James Paul Gee pointed out, “video games have an unmet potential to create complexity by letting people experience the world from different perspectives.” 5 

There will be times when we must backtrack in order to solve an issue. We might have to recruit a member into our team that has skills that we lack. For events like this, we must be critical thinkers, not memorizers. Here’s where a Virtual Reality Adulting 101 video game would be beneficial. As quickly mentioned in our introduction, our school systems would have limitations. Some challenges would be due to time limits and material necessities if this curriculum was to be added to school systems.

And even if these limitations were bypassed,

Kurt Squire also identifies a constant issue that we still today are trying to figure out in our youth’s school system:

“There is a dangerous assumption prevailing in current education policy that education is really a problem of finding the “right” program (such as Success for All) that will work for all children and teachers across all situations. As opposed to treating education as a human endeavor that is driven by kids, teachers, and parents in complex social situations, this “magic bullet” approach makes educational programs the source of agency. It assumes that if you find the right program, you will “fix” education, end poverty, and save the world.” 6  

Setting up the learning experience.

Similar to how Dragon Age: Origins is set up where we customize our character and choose our paths, we could set up Adulting 101 to have similar but more relatable tasks that are disguised as interactive games. Some examples of some Adulting 101 tasks would be: 

• visiting a car maintenance shop where we, as the virtual character, gain experience points from instructed tasks on how to check oil levels and tire pressures. Over time, the guidance must be looked up and mistakes (like over-inflating a tire) will damage the character or hurt one’s experience score.
• cooking challenges where we’re guided on temperature control on the stove and how to handle grease fires. As our cooking experience increases, so does the task availability (a similar game would be The Cooking Game VR for the Oculus).
• an interactive cursive writing game where rooms are unlocked when one successfully carves a word or phrase onto the wall or door (this would be good for magic-wielding areas where a virtual wand is used as a writing utensil).

And it doesn’t have to stop here.

If multiple minds with various versions of their skills come together to contribute a section to the game, we can create an environment that can cater to multiple cultural and educational backgrounds. As James Paul Gee indicated, “a good video game adapts to the level of the player, rewards different players differently (but rewards them all), and often stays at the edge of the player’s regime of competence.” 7 and that we start the player “with cases that are basic or fundamental in the sense that they lead the learner to discover and practice what are, in fact, fruitful patterns and generalizations.” 8

Every single mind is too unique to learn the same thing in the same way at the same speed.

By combining a multitude of options and skills for the player to learn and expand on, hopefully, we can avoid the limitation and the dilutional trap of the “one size fits all” method. Overall, this Virtual Reality Life 101 class is not to replace the home or school lessons about life but to be an extension of that knowledge.

Paraphrasing Barbara Oakley from her TED Talk, she explains that we must understand at least two of our brain’s modes: focused and diffused; that one may learn, we need to know when to focus and when to relax or just have fun. When we remain in focus mode for too long, as we a lot of times do in school, our minds will stick to one problem and ignore other ideas. When we allow our minds to release that tension, then we’re able to come up with innovative ways around the issue. 9  

Combining the virtual world with our physical lessons.

First, let’s be introduced to trigonometry in the classroom. Then, we can enter a Virtual Reality engineering game to apply that knowledge to our virtual characters and play with that new information in a usable sense. There will be a lot of trial and error in the initial versions of the game, but we can make it optional for a massive multiplayer mode where we can communicate and help each other expand and improve our knowledge. To finish off, Kurt Squire greatly expresses that, “there’s no one formula for creating an educational book…or an educational film. Likewise, there is no one way to create educational games. In fact, as educators and designers, we are not really good at it yet, but we’re starting to get there.”10

An interactive and collaborative game like this would require the minds of a variety of thinkers and access to VR systems all around to make it successful. But just as life itself, hopefully through trial, error, patience, and teamwork, we can figure out Adulting 101 together. 

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Resources from the Research

Credit:

1. James Paul Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 Revised), 174.
2. James Paul Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 Revised), 208.
3. Kurt Squire and James Paul Gee, Video Games and Learning: Teaching and Participatory Culture in the Digital Age (New York: Teachers College Press, 2011), 22.
4. Dragon Age: Origins, Computer software (Redwood City, CA: Electronic Arts, 2010)
5. James Paul Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 Revised), 158.
6. Kurt Squire and James Paul Gee, Video Games and Learning: Teaching and Participatory Culture in the Digital Age (New York: Teachers College Press, 2011), 57.
7. James Paul Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 Revised), 122
8. James Paul Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 Revised), 138
9. Barbara Oakley, TEDxTalks: Learning How to Learn (YouTube, August 05, 2014. Accessed May 13, 2018)
10. Kurt Squire and James Paul Gee, Video Games and Learning: Teaching and Participatory Culture in the Digital Age (New York: Teachers College Press, 2011), xi.