This post is incomplete, but does give some visuals to my students’ work! Finished post by Sunday 10/20/24
What started as an experiment in providing psychological safety for students and challenging myself to maintain my mantra of “I am always a student, only sometimes a teacher” (I knew going in that much of what would be required in terms of coding, 3D modeling, etc I wasn’t sure how we would get it done), turned into an exciting, satisfying experience for both students and myself. Thomas Edison used to call a press conference and announce a breakthrough his team had accomplished. He would then return back to his team and tell them, “I just told the world we’ve already done it, so we better figure it out”. Yeah, it was kind of like that.
Recruiting partner companies to make VR job training sims at the local chamber of commerce
“How do you acquire local businesses to be partners?”
Our strategy was to simply go where the businesses are, the local chamber of commerce and LinkedIn. The chamber graciously allowed me 2 minutes at a breakfast meeting where I showed some photos of past students’ work and pitched it as “Your company will get a FREE functioning prototype of a VR job training simulation which many companies are exploring, as well as give valuable experience to aspiring student developers”. It worked, and we got some takers.
“How do you train all the students in all the areas required to make a VR app like coding, 3D modeling, testing on Quest 2 headsets, etc?”
Short answer: I didn’t.
Medium Answer: I saw my primary role as, “Teach THIS class, Game Design, as a VR Game Design class following Unity’s Create with VR free course. I’ve taught this many semesters before, but what was different was preparing students from day zero that everything they learn will need to be applied in a real world setting. In essence, they are creating their final projects from the start rather than finishing the training, then planning and staring final projects.
Students progress through the Unity free course “Create with VR“, with the aide of my tutorials
Manufacturing VR job training prototype
Assembly line job training prototype
Change a car’s brake pads training prototype
Replace cutting teeth in heavy machinery training prototype
“Reachability Test” from Lockheed Martin on designing workstations (From AR/VR World London 2019)