Tag: Future

FrameVR: Showing their cards

Capture from movie 2001 A Space Odessey showing HAL reading lips in a crucial scene

LANDMARK MEDIA / Alamy Stock Photo

For quite some tie, I’ve been wondering what cards FrameVR.io (hereafter called Frame) had to play in the AI-in-XR space. They were flirting with the concept right around the time of the Mozilla Hubs announced shutdown, but despite witnessing the entire XR industry contract around them, they kept claiming “We’re all in on AI”. They seemed to mean more than just AI characters in XR space. I just didn’t know how.

With Gabe Baker’s “AI In Meetings: Treading on Sacred Human Space” LinkedIn article of January 23, 2025, I got a much clearer vision. And I’m disturbed.

This post, therefore, is a response. I write it with a pang of regret, but here goes.

A Brief History of FrameVR, from Heather’s perspective

I have the date when Frame arrived on my radar: March 27, 2020. I was exploring easy-to-access XR platforms and spent some time exploring Frame with the great Scot Daniel Livingstone.

Capture of a fun photosphere of Star Wars Lego toys in Daniel Livinstone's living room.

Exploring Daniel’s 360 photosphere in Frame

Frames are essentially web rooms in 3D. As Frame’s website says, “Frame is a beta product from Virbela. Frame makes it easy to communicate and collaborate in 3D environments, right from the web browser.” Frame was one of several no-download required (hence WebXR) platforms that included Mozilla Hubs, Janus, rumii, and Cryptovoxels. Similar competitors had native apps that needed to be downloaded including ENGAGE, Second Life, and Somnium Space.

Awkwardly, the landing page for Frame used to drop a visitor directly INTO a Frame, which while demonstrating what it was immediately, was unnerving for the unready. I’m glad to see now that they redirect into a more traditional webpage now that has a bit more of “who we are, what you get, and how much this costs” layout.

After that first exploration, I’d go back into Frame on and off for years, mostly for events, meetings, and conferences. To give Frame some credit, they were and still are marketed towards business or professional use, that is meetings and events. From the default spaces available to the business attire avatars, they bend to the professional market.

As of today, Frame’s top 6 use cases listed on their website are professional: team meetings, recruitment, vendor showcase, meetings, campus twins, and networking. This is not to say that they didn’t cater to the education market – they did! It’s just that most education uses were from the same list: meetings, recruitment, campus classrooms, etc. I see one “soccer strategy” use in the use cases– that’s interesting. But most the education uses are just the same as business uses. I’m going to guess that if there’s an educational use that is completely unique (Hmm…underwater basket weaving?), that’s either proprietary and therefore NOT shared by Frame or those Frames relay entirely on clients bringing their own 3D builds with them and not having Frame provide them. Either way, it looks like overall “creative” use is limited to creatively using what they already offer.

Disclosure

It’s time to veer off and talk a bit about Virbela and I have to throw out TONS of disclosures now.
I owned a Virbela Virtual Campus (VC) in my role as Chief Operating Officer of the Immersive Learning Resource Network (iLRN). iLRN’s deal with Virbela was:

iLRN had unlimited capacity campus for free for spin-ups. We could generate new rooms, new building floors, new buildings, and entire new islands at our demand. (That was actually wicked fun.) In return, we paid Virbela 50% of the rent we collected on contracts that we signed into our Campus. So iLRN was a subletter.

My COO responsibility was that Campus, account management, and finances. I also conducted tours, did training, and provided tech support. We hosted some lovely events, but meetings were basically all we did. There were a few random boat rides as well.

However, as anyone that knows me could guess, I tangled horns with Virbela.

Here are two specific times:

Sales

When I came on board as COO, I was soon contacted by a Virbela employee to set up a daily meeting to ‘talk about my pipeline’. She wanted to talk about sales leads. Virbela could always see a Google doc where I kept all leads. She spent her time encouraging me to frame (haha) my conversations with future clients with Virbela essentially answering their (whatever) needed use case. Said another way, sales; I was being treated like I was a salesperson, learning the ropes.

Bear in mind that Virbela had a right to see the future as grand and rosy. 🤩🌹 I had heard informally that the home Virbela Virtual Campus had leaped from a paltry 30 visitors a day to over 300 visitors a day during the pandemic. So much traffic had increased that they staffed a concierge desk with 1 or 2 salespersons standing by for many hours each day, ready to break off, give tours, and assist in collecting specs for contracts. They saw no end to the possible companies and schools that would want to walk in and book a contract for fully made and ready to go VR space.

This request to meet everyday to discuss sales struck me very badly.

My job was not pushy sales. I’ve never loved sales. Yuck.

My ethics as a instructional designer forbids me from recommending an educational product that does NOT meet a clients’ needs. If it doesn’t fit, you don’t recommend it.

Screen capture from inside of a Virtual Campus meeting room showing blurred faces.

Capture from a meeting inside of the VC with a client where the VC did not fit their needs; they had users mostly with smartphone technology. VC was a native app that needs a computer. I voted against offering a contract. Fortunately, the client didn’t take one either.

We were a non-profit, so beating the bushes for money was not our style. Later, iLRN would get chided by Virbela for offering rental prices 5x lower that other Virbela campuses, to which we were stymied and replied with “You, Virbela, told us our prices.” Talk about greedy.

So one day I had a chance to fill in a “how are we doing?” Virbela survey which I thought was large and somewhat anonymous. I said “I don’t need daily watching over my sales lead pipeline.” Virbela sat me down in a following meeting and said “Sorry, I guess you don’t need daily meetings.” To which, I was more perplexed that my feedback had been directly identified with me. Oops. Either way, sales lady backed off.

Avatars

iLRN had booked in a major speaker into an event, but we also knew that this speaker would prefer to wear a hijab. We had no hijabs in our avatar collection. We checked. We checked because we knew it was important to be as ready as possible in advance for a speaker. I think we also asked Virbela if we could have hijabs on our VC. I don’t remember a response.

Our speaker arrived, worked on their avatar, and settled on a hat/hair combo that was the same color, which visually was close to a hijab. But as we thought they might, they blasted Virbela on social media, pointing out that hijabs were not available.

Before you could say spit spot, Virbela socials responded right back, “Oh but we do have hijabs! You must have missed them!”

I call bullshit. OUR VERSION of Virbela did not have them. We checked, in advance, remember? My conspiracy theory is that Virbela loaded them into our version just after the speaker complained publicly.

Total freaking bullshit, to claim that we had them. I really didn’t like the way Virbela treated the speaker OR us as their subletters.

After I left iLRN, I’ve used FrameVR as a contractor to host a fun student trivia game; the ability to turn audio zones on and off was fun.

In all of my dealings with Gabe up to this point, I found him to be a kind, dedicated, upbeat, and friendly ‘would do anything to help you’ person in the WebXR world. It’s funny that I had a friend that also knew Gabe but confusingly (to me), he did NOT get along with Gabe at all. I eventually broke off that friendship but I joked that “In the divorce, I got Gabe.” 😁

The horizon darkens

When Mozilla announced that they were no longer be supporting their Hubs WebXR product, Gabe wrote a lovely tribute initially on LinkedIn. I thought it was a classy move, given that FrameVR and Hubs had been up to that point been direct competitors. I was hoping that Gabe would hold Frame above the fray that was about to happen over at Hubs…but alas, in reply to one comment on his post, he pitched Frame to a listless Hubs user.

Oh. Those warm fuzzies were nice while they lasted. 🤦 But, abrupt end.

Seeing XR companies contracting and closing (AltspaceVR closed in March 2023, Mozilla Hubs closed in May 2024), I wondered how Gabe was seeing Frame go forward. He kept sending out the “Frame’s going all in for AI”-type message.

Capture of Gabe Baker's AI in Meetings: Treading on Sacred Human Space LinkedIn article header.

From the title of Gabe’s January 23, 2025 article AI In Meetings Treading on Sacred Human Space, I was a bit hopeful thinking, “OK, an acknowledgement that humans have such a thing as sacred space…and it means something.” Initially, Gabe does a good job acknowledging the tasks that AI does well and not well in meeting space (because remember Virbela/Frame is all about meetings). It really sounds like Gabe has had a year+ of AI attending meetings and he’s got his finger on the pulse of what works and what does not. Still, most of his examples are stale & predictable.

He seems to claim that when teams are talking about something, “seeing it” in 3D is the next and better step to take:

“When people come together to meet, I think there should be as little friction as possible when this question comes up: “I wonder what that would look like?””

Yet many meetings don’t need 3D or a visualization at all (i.e. working on accounting on a spreadsheet or writing for a webpage).

Red flag

In as much as I want to give Gabe all kinds of doubt, with this, my spidey-sense meter went to 100:

“As someone who has seen how helpful AI can be across many domains,
I desperately want AI to be present and accessible during meetings.
When people see the results of our vision, they will want it too. In
fact, I think it will seem silly not to have it!

Those who don’t want
it will be the people who really want to seem like the smartest person
in the room at all times. But those who are interested in results and
not ego will be happy to have AI-powered teammates at their meetings.”

Gif of the amp maxing out analog dials from Back To the Future movie

Wait, what?

People who don’t want AI in a meeting room ‘want to seem like the smartest person in the room’?

What about people who don’t want AI in the room stealing the peoples’ creativity and sharing it to who knows who or selling it to who knows who? Or what if AI just plain summarizes it wrong? Or AI gets it wrong? It’s been known to happen. (Schools Using AI Emulation of Anne Frank That Urges Kids Not to Blame Anyone for Holocaust)

Gabe made it seem as through if you are anti-AI, you are anti-Google, anti-learning, and much worse, egotistical! I guess privacy got checked at the door? For the record, I’m very pro-Google and pro-internet use during meetings or classes.

This specific statement is a red flag because it is an emotionally laden argument popping right out of the middle of this discussion. It is as if Gabe ran out of patience and burst out “If you don’t want AI, you’re an ego monster!” 😠

When a calm reasonable discussion suddenly goes emotional, something is wrong. Gabe lost his shit for a moment there. As Spock would say “Reverting to name-calling suggests that you are defensive and therefore find my opinion valid.” So, he’s probably getting pushback on this AI thing.

I hoped he didn’t really mean it so I read on.

Nope, he doubled down…I mean tripled down. He wants AI agents in every meeting, in the name of eliminating duplicated work across companies. (So much for visualization?) He wants AI inserting itself fully into conversations, setting up follow up meetings etc.

Is anyone else getting a creepy feeling here? This is way beyond “all meetings will be recorded” –which would make me make tracks outta there anyways. The invasion of freedom of speech (because some folks will NOT say things if they knew they were going to be hyper-on-the-record) during work meetings will be staggering. Stymied talk equals failing organizations and failing people. This is going to end badly.

Meme showing HAL and the text: I'm sorry Dave I can't do that line from 2001 A Space Odessey

OK, so here’s the $64,000 question: Would I, as a consultant, recommend Frame for educational contexts in the future?

My answer: I’ve agonized over this, but I probably could not recommend it. I cannot in good faith recommend using a platform that might record children or learners without their expressed consent and use those recordings, summaries, or derivatives for a future plethora of uses not being disclosed now. It’s not worth it to “visualize” a solution or have an AI set a future meeting. I can do those on my own, thanks.

For the moment, I find that sacred human space IS being treaded upon. I can’t in good faith say that’s a direction that education needs to go.

#InstructionalDesign #edtech #XR #VR #AIInXR #AI #Frame #Virbela

February 5, 2025

Instructional Design in the Metaverse Part 8

What fights won’t we fight? What is our secret weapon? And what lies ahead? It’s the final part of this series.

(more…)

October 22, 2023
Seeking Integrity in VR Educational Research
Credit: Midjourney and me

I’m starting a new article series today, calling out ‘bad research’ or research that is quoted badly in virtual reality for educational use. I thought I would start with a whopper – a really egregious example to start this series with a bang. Then I checked my notes and realized that this example is from LAST MONTH, June 2023. I’m not even going into the vault for this. I’m barely picking myself up off the ground from the shock wave.

So, like Mario says “Here we go!”

What Is Said About The Research Versus What The Research Says

June 2023, LinkedIn Post:

“According to a study from the University of Maryland in 2018, learners remember an astounding 90% of what they experience in VR compared to merely 10% of what they read and 20% of what they hear.”

I believe this is the research referred to:

Krokos, E., Plaisant, C., & Varshney, A. (2019). Virtual memory palaces: immersion aids recall. Virtual reality, 23, 1-15. https://obj.umiacs.umd.edu/virtual_reality_study/10.1007-s10055-018-0346-3.pdf

Hey, I’ll give you the abstract because I know you don’t like to read long papers:

“Virtual reality displays, such as head-mounted displays (HMD), affords us a superior spatial awareness by leveraging our vestibular and proprioceptive senses, as compared to traditional desktop displays. Since classical times, people have used memory palaces as a spatial mnemonic to help remember information by organizing it spatially and associating it with sali�ent features in that environment. In this paper, we explore whether using virtual memory palaces in a head-mounted display with head-tracking (HMD condition) would allow a user to better recall information than when using a traditional desktop display with a mouse-based interaction (desktop condition). [OK skip to here because this is the interesting part:] We found that virtual memory palaces in HMD condition provide a superior memory recall ability compared to the desktop condition. We believe this is a frst step in using virtual environments for creating more memorable experiences that enhance productivity through better recall of large amounts of information organized using the idea of virtual memory palaces.”

Google Scholar tells me this study has been cited 461 times. That’s a low-medium citation number. Not bad, and remember that’s in ~3 years of time.

Believe it or not, I’m walking RIGHT PAST that 90%, 10%, and 20% because it has already be debunked here and here. Also, to be fair to the research paper, it never quotes those 10 and 20% numbers.

My Take on the Research

Research found 90.48% recall in the headset condition, with a 78.57% score from the desktop display control group. So that’s ~10% higher with the headset.

From Section 4.1 “Using a paired t test with Bonferroni–Holm correction, we calculated p = 0.0017 < 0.05 which shows that our result was statistically significant.”

Interesting. I’m not familiar with Bonferroni-Holm correction. Just looking at it, it appears to be a method of discarding some data. I wonder if NOT using it showed a not statistically significant difference between the 90 and 78. Their n was 40. Smaller group sizes means it can be harder to justify the data as fitting a normal bell curve.

Figure 5 shows the data and just looking at it, you can see that the numbers landed in similar scores. The boxes overlap, so whatever the effect of VR is, it’s not that substantial in this study. Students were learning, regardless.

But here comes the whopper. Check out this little detail in the Materials section:

“For this study, we used a traditional desktop with a 30 inch (76.2) cm—diagonal monitor and an Oculus DK2 HMD. The rendering for the desktop was configured to match that of the Oculus with a resolution of 1920 × 1080 pixels (across the two eyes) with a rendering field of view (FOV) of 100◦. In order to give the desktop display the same field of view as the HMD, the participants were positioned with their heads 10 inches (25.4 cm) away from the monitor.”

10 inches away

The “control group” sat 10 inches from their desktop monitor to use the desktop condition.

WHO DOES THAT?

You know, I was curious. I grabbed my ruler.

How far away are you sitting from YOUR monitor?

I’m currently sitting 24 inches from my monitor. I leaned in to feel what 10 inches is like.

At that point, it became no wonder to me that the control group scored about 10 points lower. It was maddening. Remember, the learners had to look all around themselves so completing learning at 10″ from the monitor would be…uh…weird?

This is a great example of not seeing the forest for the trees in VR in education design. In order to match the field of view, they forced learners to unusually use their desktop monitors.

There is too much. Let me sum up.

The quote is from a keynote speaker at a research conference. I can’t believe anyone in the audience did not flag the play on the quote, the percentages, or the design setup of the U. of Maryland study. At the industry.
- The difference between 90 and 78 *might* be too close to call a difference caused by VR.
- Setting up learners to use a monitor from 10 inches away is unusual, to say the least.
- When research sets up unfair comparison conditions, the results should be questioned.
As Hill Street Blues would say, “Let’s be careful out there.”

What do you think?

#VirtualReality #VR #XR #VRForLearning #Technology #Future #edtech #learning #education #UserExperience #InstructionalDesign #research #ComparisonResearch #Media #MediaForLearning #BonferroniHolm #ImmersiveExperience #Desktop #Design #MemoryPalace #ResearchIntegrity

This article is co-published to my LinkedIn account here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/seeking-integrity-vr-educational-research-heather-dodds-ph-d-

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

CC BY-NC-SA
July 26, 2023
Prognostication

Photo by Olena Kamenetska on Unsplash

I’m getting a pretty strong reputation for being the most anti-XR person associated with XR. That’s fine. Proud of it. Trying hard to explain my point of view.

But I thought I would get into writing my prognostication about the future of XR.

In the next 5-10 years (closer to 10 than 5), the XR education market will explode. Entering the metaverse for a class or meeting will be JUST AS COMMON as entering a Zoom meeting is now (very common in 2023, and hated, such as the phrase “Zoom fatigue”). BTW, similarly maligned analogous technologies: PowerPoint or Second Life.

The quality of what will be produced will run the gamut; great to garbage.

After the market becomes saturated (and here comes the kicker) learning results will decrease (from what will appear to be ever increasing highs) and the overall impact of XR on education will be essentially nil. It will be “another thing”.

There. Forecast made.

March 8, 2023
Tenure should be abolished because tenure is slavery
Tenure is one of our current day forms of slavery. Response post to: https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/online-trending-now/communicating-realities-higher-ed-2022?fbclid=IwAR3B_Sp0QFDigHRGAfPDG852F3DGX5uMWwgae6FIg3iS-0Z5dYo44KsVNu4

It’s is not direct slave-is-slave, master-is-master slavery. It is, as is some forms of education now, disaggregated. The parts of slavery now are possessed or embodied within different entities, but it is still slavery if one defines slavery as a lack of freedom combined with a lifetime of benefit.

Here me out.

1. Students pay the price–their tuition literally becomes the forever paycheck that will output last in this process. As long as students keep joining the institution–and really, ask any university how important “Enrollment” is to them– the input into the system keeps happening. This is the input of “lifeblood” for lack of a better analogy. Without students, a university dies. In this model, the debt that students carry becomes the disaggregated “lack” or deficit.

2. Faculty pay the entry price to attain the status of “tenure”. (Note: I can point out that paying this price is one-time technically.) They will go through the YEARS of hoops it takes to get this status. Now, I will not pretend to know what this is. I’ve simply turned my head and hands away from this entirely. I worked at institutions that did not offer it OR I did not work in roles that had tenure in the career path. (Sabbatical is a completely different idea, BTW.) But I’ve heard the horrors stories. I can’t even LINK to one article because a Google search of just “Chronicle of Higher Education gave up pursuing tenure” pulls up 8 articles in just the past 5 years and that’s just the surface!

But I know we’re talking years of:
- Attending faculty meetings but being on time AND contributing more than one’s fair share
- Publishing and its attendant research
- Excellent teaching record
- Carrying the load of freshman courses that would make one cry daily
- Simultaneously carry strong academic conversations while respecting other tenured profs
- Attend non-academic events for the university to look like you have ‘team spirit’ (READ: Football)
- Don’t forget to buy a house in the university neighborhood.
Side point: I won’t get deep into the scandalous price that adjuncts are paid for what is known as often EQUIVALENT or HARDER work with many less benefits and pay. It’s very true that adjuncts could be paid a fraction (the article says 1/4) of what a full time faculty member is paid for the same work. THE SAME. How is that EVEN legal?

3. Then there is the “forever” part. The faculty member, once they get tenure, supposedly has a ‘forever paycheck’ and now a benefit of this lauded extra thing called “Academic Freedom” (which…actually….checking the paperwork was a right awarded to all faculty (including adjuncts) from the date of hire…but no one noticed that) but still… FREEDOM.

And yet, that forever is only contingent on the university being open. Which brings us back to #1. Students. A university is only open if it has students.

Post-pandemic. Students are realizing they have a much broader choice. I hope they embrace that and walk with their dollars. Universities will shut down, profs will lose tenure, and hopefully that concept will pass from memory. Bye bye slavery.
May 14, 2022
The Future Of Higher Education
Question: What does oversight of every instructional design (ID) department on the planet give you?

Answer: Vision.

This vision of the future of higher education is summarized in this video (3:18).

Prior
to 2017, instructional designers (IDs) at their institutions were often
a department of one. As such, instructional designers work in an
isolated position. Tasked with working with an entire university’s
faculty & staff, instructional designers often find it rare to find a
sympathetic ear for their common concerns.

Peter Shea created a Facebook group, Instructional Designers in Education,
in April 2017 with the hopes that instructional designers working in
educational institutions could gather and use each other for support. In
joining, instructional designers in education are part of a virtual department and
can discuss the sociology of being an instructional designer. In this
way, this group leverages the power of connections to add a human touch.
At this writing, the group has doubled in size since 2020.

The most common post themes include:
- Challenges
  with working with faculty, who while being subject matter experts,
  rarely have even a basic foundation in educational theory.
- The recurrence and tamping down of myths such as learning styles and using highlighters.
- Learning Management System (LMS) tech fixes and recommendations
- Job postings (huge uptick here with MANY classroom teachers converting to ID)
- Explorations of the impact of new technology on teaching pedagogy.
As
soon as the black swan event of COVID-19 struck, we knew that
instructional designers were going to get hit hard: hit up for advice,
course building tasks, anything and everything related to creating
instructional content for online.

True
story: As soon as a residential campus shut down and sent students
home, administration sent out one email with three items:
- A link to the campus web conferencing provider,
- a link to the campus course management system, and
- a link to the campus IT help desk.
The campus administration was confident that they could handle this situation.

I
was personally approached to give advice for an in-person class that
was converting to online. I asked, “What experience do you want to
create for your learners?” The answer I received was “Exactly the same
as in class.” I said quietly to myself “No, you don’t.”

With
decades of research in online learning successfully pushed into
instructional design programs (because online or not, the IDs are the
assumed experts in the campus LMS–an online resource), we knew that
instructional designers were about to get hit VERY hard.

At first,
some of the comments were cute and I’ll admit I had to stop myself from
reaching out to pet these instructors on the head and say “oh, you are
so cute!” when I heard things like “I find it much easier to work online
when the music I listen to has no lyrics” (cough multimedia principle)
or “I find it is much more important to reach out to and show care to
each of my students as compared to when I was in the
classroom.” (<-OK, that instructor gets points! Good job!) This
article, COVID-19 Lessons To Take Forward for Higher Education, has some positive conclusions about the push to online teaching in the pandemic.

Futurists
kept whispering that COVID-19 pandemic was not a black swan event. We
paid attention to that. We immediately started thinking 6 months to 1
year down the road. Higher education administrators were going to want
to move as quickly as they could to pandemic-proof their campuses. So I looked at the future and said “what’s next?”

Here’s my version:

1. Web conferencing software captures all lectures.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56247489

In
the frantic move to online, instructors did not want to leave any
students behind and records all of their classes. Within one year, the
world has the entire existing knowledge base of every class recorded.

Effect: Those videos can be analyzed for teaching style.

Really, who has time for that? Most higher education campuses barely have capacity to observe each instructor once per semester.

Artificial Intelligence: Hi.

2. Artificial Intelligence evaluates all instructors.

Artificial
intelligence has the time. Sorting through this data would not be hard
to program. The characteristics of a great teacher that separates them
from a good teacher are quantifiable. It’s not in the content (Congratulations, your YouTube video covered the content in 55 minutes, perfect! Err. No.)

Great teaching is in how the teacher interacts with the students. After
all, if you just want content covered in 55 minutes with audio overlay
and visuals, that’s a Discovery channel video or even ditch the audio
track and hand out a PDF. Content does not need to be a
lecture. Teachers are about interaction and engagement. A great teacher can teach a good lesson even on a bad day. That’s a needle NOT hard to find in this haystack.

This will be called Quality Control.

In the process, universities discover that…some teachers are just bad teachers.

No going back from online education though.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41928-020-00534-0

Look at that last phrase: could permanently change how education is delivered.

3. Consultants advise higher education that there are too many instructors.

(The following is my recollection
of events, not written here as factual.) Around 20 years ago, a couple
state university systems had the epiphany that they were no longer
serving students within their state geographically as land-grant
institutions were originally designed to do. For example, if you live
in PoeDunk Town, you would naturally choose to go to PoeDunk University
where they offered a version of an academic major you *might*
want. You didn’t go anywhere else (and certainly not out of state!)
because your needs were being served locally. About 20 years ago, state
universities realized that students were willing to get in their cars
and drive hours to a different in-state university to get the program
they really wanted. That meant that each university had to stop
competing against every other university in the state for the same
students in the same program. Instead of geographical dominance, the
universities decided to divvy up academic programs and let each
university specialize in around 10 program areas and not compete outside
of those areas. That meant that if you were in PoeDunk town and you
really wanted to go to medical school, you would go to Medical School
University and not the local university. Problem solved. Temporarily.
We are far past keeping students within state borders now.

Earth
is facing this problem world-wide. Really want to learn Alaskan
Wildlife Resource Management but live far away? No problem. Within 5
years, every school will have a retinue of online programs that you can
take from anywhere.

Harvard not in your home country? No problem.
Take their online program. Want that unique program out of New South
Wales? You got it, online!

Suddenly, we have too many courses online teaching exactly the same content (albeit different instructors/styles).

Wait, what if Subject X has always been the bane of your existence and that is the problem. You just can’t pass that course.

Oh, here is where this entire vision gets VERY interesting.

Enter blockchain.

Enter global enterprise.

They have been getting ready.

Blockchain is already coming into higher education in several places: Woolf University and transcripts (Aamir, Qureshi, Khan, and Huzaifa, (2020).

Blockchain
eliminates the need for the university to be the arbiter of reputation.
It allows for reputation-based “coinage” (I only use coinage to convey using a term associated with value–this actually has no connection to cryptocurrency.)

In my video, I show the current model. I’ll skip that here and go into the future model.

Student A shops for a class on Subject X. She comparison shops at Amazon Education, Walmart.edstore, and Google.edu (these are mockups!)

Mockup of future imagined Amazon-based education platform

Mockup of future imagined Walmart-based education platform

Mockup of future imagined Google-based education platform

She
considers her price-point, preferred instructional approaches, time
available, compatibility of format and purchases a course from
Instructor B.

Mockup of a web store page selling student seats in a course on Subject X.

Student A earns a blockchain coin for “Subject X” issued by Instructor B.

Both of their reputations are now connected.

Student A goes on to work for Boss C where Subject X is part of her daily job.

Boss
C evaluates how competent Student A is with Subject X. He awards her a
coin that indicates that she is competent working with Subject X.

Student A gets most of the positive reputation coin.

But,
because part of the awarding of a coin from Boss C is reputation and
Boss C is, in part, telling Instructor B that she did a good job instructing Student A– part of the positive bump in reputation goes back to Instructor B and it is reflected in her
ratings. She can now charge a little more for her course teaching
because she can prove that her students go on to work with Subject X
successfully.

Notice in all of this, an institution of higher education was not needed.

Up
to now, universities have been arbiters of transcripts. If they kept
the transcript sacred (and they really do) then all of the reputation in
a student’s transcript is bound up and captured by the university. The
university charges for it and doesn’t release those transcripts easily
at all! But in this blockchain model, you do not need a university.

You
do not need a university for physical hosting of the course. The
instructor can run it all with one Zoom and Dropbox license.

You
do not need a university to collect tuition or pay the instructor. The
money passes directly between them and instructor can charge a
market-supported rate for their courses. Cheaper courses with less
instructor inaction and poorer instructors are available. Better
teachers are literally raised up due to blockchain coinage.

Look at the positives:
- The relationship between what Student A is competent in and her Instructor and Boss is fluid.
- At any point, reputation could be modified or retracted.
- There is a direct feedback loop between employers and instructors.
I
can hear you from here. You are asking…but if we don’t have
universities, what about research? We depend on universities to be the
bastion of unbiased research. If we simply don’t need them anymore,
won’t research disappear?

OK, once I stop laughing about putting the word “unbiased” and
“universities” together in the same sentence (as I hold these truths to
be self-evident, they never were unbiased), I’ll tell you that
research won’t stop. There is such a thing as a research center– where
courses do not play second fiddle to research and
academics-as-researchers can do their great and necessary work.

I’m actually ALL FOR research. My disdain for the rat race known as
tenure has leaked out in social media before and I’m really sorry for
those that have worked so hard but it is slavish institution that
protects professors that give high grades to women with short skirts.
And about a million other problems.

What about the fact that a
degree is a purposeful gathering of subjects that outside industry
advisory boards have authorized that are intended to create a
well-rounded citizen and competent first-day-on-the-job ability? (I am a
Liberal Studies major myself!) The disconnect between what industry
wants and what industry gets from employees is already a strong flowing
objection out there. I do respect that getting certifications to solve
problems doesn’t solve every employment skill problem. For example, some
workers have years of technical experience. But they are unpleasant to
work with, to say the least, and they will not rise up the career ladder
without a “degree”. Here is the key: I find that employers often
shuttle these workers off for a degree NOT to prove technical skills–
the candidates already have them and find school work monotonous and
pointless. The employers want the workers to pick up those finer skills that would be covered in the “required” courses outside of a major (aka
learn to embrace diversity by taking a course that forces a learner to
embrace diversity. Learn an appreciation of alternative ways of thought
by taking a humanities course. Learn other world viewpoints by taking a
course about another culture. And so on.) I find that this could be
solved. Just make humanities, art, and writing required certification
courses in jobs! What about the overall idea of a program or
degree; the concept that a program is a well though out gathering of
courses balancing requirements against electives. What if the
student-become-employee doesn’t check every traditional program box?

It
is current bane of higher education that students graduate after X
years with a degree that is already out of date. So I kick pre-formed
degrees to the curb too. More ebb and flow. More consumer choice.
Employers should just look for what they need and by-pass the rubber
stamp of the degree.

I’d like to see what education looks like with less medieval serfdom
and more market demand. Some places have been getting away with
educating us for years and it seems to have worked (cough, military,
church, media, cough).

So, what do you think is coming next?

#blockchain
#HigherEducation #Future #Vision #Research #OnlineEducation
#InstructionalDesigners #ArtificialIntelligence
#WhereWeAreGoingWeDoNotNeedUniversities

This article originally posted to LinkedIn on July 14, 2021. Updated with images (because Google might eat old images) and one slight edit deleting a comment about Amazon Education overlords on February 18, 2026.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-higher-education-heather-elizabeth-dodds-ph-d-
November 11, 2021
State of XR 2020 – My Conclusions
After my participation of the State of XR 2019 2020 project, I
have come to the following three conclusions. The overall results
edited by iLRN will replace what was known as the New Media Consortium
(NMC) Report for 2020, albeit for XR topics (Virtual Reality, Augmented
Reality, Mixed Reality, Virtual Worlds) only. The following are the
schisms present within XR that most fascinate me.

Accessibility versus Immersion

Again
and again, when my fellow researchers and I examined sources, papers,
and examples of XR being used in research and education, we found gaps
in either of these concepts. It is as if you can have one but not the
other.

If a technology is accessible, it is not fully immersive.

If a technology is amazingly immersive, it is not accessible to some population.

This
tension spreads far beyond a physical campus or location as well. If a
university is investing in maker spaces, 3D printing, or immersive
headsets (all items that are by definition limited to a certain space
and time), the tradeoff is that only a few users can partake of an
experience at any given time. This opens up the conundrum of do you
invest heavily in spaces where only a few students benefit? To increase
accessibility, do you design immersive rooms instead of VR headsets?
Then, if you have a room, do you put more than one person in it?

To be clear, I feel that this conundrum can be overcome. We’re just not there yet. I feel that the solution lies in the fact that we (as in humanity) will be able to adapt to not fully immersive experiences and we’ll call that good enough.

The Most Effective XR has the Highest Stakes

Over
and over, as I stack up the pile of research studies that show that XR
is an effective conduit of education, the majority of studies right now
are from the emergency services: medical, military, police, and fire.

Why is that?

Putting this conundrum in another light, we know that immersive experiences heretofore have used fear as their greatest emotional coinage
(2018, Bailenson). For example, put a learner into a training situation
where they have to find and rescue a person from a burning building and
then begin CPR, you will find that XR gives very impressive learning outcomes.

So
why was the high stakes emotion of fear the same effective coinage in
both situations? Was that destined to be XR’s first proven success?

I don’t have a problem with this. Don’t misinterpret me.

But
I wonder what it is about ‘high stakes’ and fear that made this emotion
the first to show it works via the research in XR? Bring humans into an
experience where it feels scary, but make sure they remember that the
situation isn’t real. The result becomes high entertainment value (i.e.
Grand Theft Auto). My point is that there are many other emotions that
we could pick for XR to ellicit/play on.

We could have selected love as our emotion. What about wonder? Awe? Compassion?

I’m not saying that there are not XR applications out there that don’t pull upon the non-fear emotions; there are. But why did fear get to the front of the “effective” line?

The Role of Justice is Coming to XR

If you followed my exploration of the History of XR series, you know that I was engaging in an exercise of future prediction. As such, I sensed two choices:
1. All possibilities are possible.
2. Patterns predict what will happen.
After
my study, I decided, as a designer, that choice #2 is the better bet.
That is, if I could find a foundation upon which a feature, design, or
product was built and *that* foundation was successful, then I would bet
that the future feature would be successful.

Here is a simple example:

At this point, books
are one of humanity’s greatest design successes. Many users want to
read (there is market desire) and are more successful after reading
(effectiveness is high). Books are predictable; they contain many
patterns that are widely understood: title, table of contents, letters
form words, words form sentences, sentences form paragraphs, paragraphs
are contained arguments, books proceed through an argument from
beginning to an end (in different directions depending on language).

An
example conclusion, therefore, is that future XR technologies *must*
contain some element of text to be successful. Purely icon-based
communication does not feel successful.

But back to XR as an entire picture. Justice was built into the very first concepts of human’s imaginings of alternate realities.
(Hello Plato!) I believe justice is still there, but it is very buried.
I look for justice to show up more prominently in the future. There are
already calls for XR to be a harassment-free or a prejudice free zone.

I’ll be spending 2020 contemplating this and looking for examples of justice in XR applications.

I seek to find justice in:

AR
– I look forward to the day when disciplines described today as ‘for
those who have vision’ to be opened to all. For example, in science we
know it is very hard to envision electron orbitals as
‘statistically-likely places to find electrons.’ AR will be able to add
that sight to anyone studying the Periodic Table. Just the same for
envisioning the flow of electrons in electricity.

VR
– Lucas Rizotto’s recently released Oculus game “Where Thoughts Go”
introduces a much more subtle version of empathy, not a bang you over
the head version.

VW – Some quiet and yet profound results are coming from the social application of virtual platforms. Virtual Ability
has been doing spectacular work for years on all kinds of physical and
mental ability fronts. I look for this to open up as an increasingly
socially acceptable form of support and thus, justice.

It’s almost a new decade! I can’t wait to see what the future does hold. See you there.

#StateOfXR
#Research #Conclusions #AccessibilityInXR #ImmersionInXR #XR #AR #VR
#VW #Fear #HighStakes #Effective #Compassion #Awe #SocialSupport
#Justice #EmergencyServices

This article originally appeared on LinkedIn on December 23, 2019. Updated font and images on February 23, 2026.
November 10, 2021
The Future of XR Headsets
Photo by Drew Graham on Unsplash

I’ve been working on a project to predict the future of XR technology
within a 5-10 year time frame. That means I’ve been reading research
reports, digging through Twitter posts for conference photos, and
reading thought pieces by some of the most valued opinions on XR in
industry and education.

Simultaneous to this project, I’ve been brushing up my skills in User Experience (UX) and my most favorite, Design Thinking.
One of the most fun aspects of Design Thinking is that I’m allowed to
let my inner empath run on full tilt. And it’s really great to let your
emotions run through bunny-filled sunshine meadows and just see what
she has to say about anything and everything. Let me tell you: she has
some real opinions on XR headsets. And almost ALL of those opinions
come from the images being used to portray headsets. Come along on this
mystical magical ride of the visuals of headsets.

At the end of
the journey, I will make a prediction about headsets. And as with
every project of mine, I’ve figured out how to work Disney into it (as much as possible).

As our starting point, I’ll state something very strongly. I’m sick of headsets where people are supposed to be wowed by XR. To
be realistic, 90% of XR headset images are these. I’ve gathered these
images from across the internet and to preserve some degree of
anonymity, I’m NOT providing the reference location. I’m not trying to
make fun of people. Please be clear on that. I’m commenting on *how we
are portraying XR to others* to, supposedly, encourage others to join
us in XR.

So
we have the “Oh my I’m surprised!” look. I think that’s what this photo
is trying to say. It’s possible she was frightened, but more on fear in
a little bit.

Honorable
mention in this category: hipster dude
looking…uh…surprised. Actually, he looks ‘tired and being forced to
look surprised’ but that could just be me overlaying college student
thoughts onto this photo.

The next one we have is the *very*
ubiquitous “Hey, we’re trying out headsets…somewhere.” I’ve got about
10 of these photos collected.

So
they are all smiling and facing the same direction. We’re supposed to
like that, right? Uh, remember that those headsets are designed to cut
off all vision except that which the designer wants you to see and those
are four women standing really close together in a public place. Where
is everyone’s hands? How did they know to stand that close together?
They were probably prompted and stood close together and *then* put the
headsets on. Yeah, that’s realistic. Is it any wonder that women, in
particular, note less comfort with XR?

Hey here’s a few more. Do you want to try yet?

I’m
solo and still comfortable standing here showing you this thing.
Wait…are you still there? Did walk away? Oo, a whole new way to
indicate non-interest at vendor tables if every vendor wore one! I
might like this.

We are friends and happy even though we can’t see each other…and you!

It’s a coincidence that those last two were Magic Leap. I’ve got nothing against Magic Leap.

Before we leave the emotional theme of happy, catch this image *from a real article*.

I
am so creeped out by this. If you don’t see it, look closely at the
mouth. Where is the mouth???? Why is the mouth from someone else????
Ah, the Hannibal Lecter of XR images.

And finally, before things get better, just remember that your XR headset isn’t this.

I got nothing for this. It’s so…nope…nothing. Someone help her.

So
back to the topic of the future. I’m asked occasionally which
technologies to invest in over the 5-10 year time frame that are winning
bets for XR. I’ve got a multiple-part article series coming on how I
arrived at my conclusions, so stay tuned for that. However, the more
XR headset images I’ve seen (like all of those images above),
the more I think we are doing a very poor job enticing new users into
XR. I feel like we are hitting all the wrong notes.

The more and
more I thought about what disturbs me about these headset images, the
more I realized that I saw a theme to headsets where I’m like ‘Yes, I
would try that,” and “Nope, I would not try that.” And here is a hint
to the theme:

Recall the custom that some fiction writers use to disguise some superheroes: they mask their eyes.
If the eyes are covered, we can’t completely know who it is. By day,
it’s just mild mannered Clark Kent. He can’t possibly be Superman.
Think that premise is just in stories? We block off someone’s eyes when
we want them to have anonymity in photos/video, etc. It seems we humans use eyes as our ultimate identification card.

While
headsets in VR are designed to take the user to different places and
times to experience the normal and phantasmagorical (<-love that
word), they do so by cutting off all view of the current space the user
is in. That’s on purpose. I got no beef with that. We have data that
these headsets *can* generate empathy. Great! I buy that too.

My problem is what if empathy when involving headsets is a two-way street?
What if I cannot believe that the user is truly impacted by an
experience until I see their eyes? Isn’t that the problem with all of
the prior VR headset images? You cannot see the user’s eyes. Ooo, so I
have hit on a real tech problem here. If I want to see the user’s eyes
and yet the user needs to see nothing of the real world in order to be
immersed in virtuality, how do we solve that problem? Right now,
headsets cannot answer to both sets of demands. However, I have also
never met a tech problem that hasn’t been able to be overcome.

The short term solution is already at hand and I’ve been discussing it on LinkedIn:
- The
  solution is that immersive headsets (mostly for VR, VW, and games) will
  do what they do best with full immersion. Said another way, Magic Leap
  and Oculus Quest– if they pursue full immersion activities, will be
  fine. We hope that the users are in a safe space with assistance
  available in case they fall or need some body space security.
- The
  solution is also that AR headsets (which are not designed for immersion
  but for information display) will focus on information display. Since
  AR is not quite pulling on the emotions as VR, it’s not as important to
  see the user’s eyes but, bonus points, I can see them.
My favorite headset therefore is…Microsoft Hololens.
It allows me to see the user’s eyes. It also has the body profile of
safety glasses (a familiar pattern). Also I believe that Microsoft is
following their own playbook that worked for Office Suite and they are
pumping the Hololens into the business market *first* and that will
create back pressure through education. (i.e. we’ve got to get some
Hololens headsets because our graduates will go out to work X job and
will be expected to have experience in headsets as part of the job
requirement.)

Said another way, as of today, let AR headsets do AR and let VR headsets do VR. Never the two shall meet. Until…

The future can and will contain headsets that will do both.
That’s my prediction. A user wearing AR technology will find their
way to their subway train, sit down, and switch over to a VR scene of
the latest episode of the Mandalorian.

OK, I realize it won’t be
*full* immersion but I think the tech is going to get better (refresh
rates, etc.) and users will accept non-full immersion. What makes me
predict that? I’ve been a glasses-wearer since kindergarten. Ask me if
it bothers me that about 30% of my field of vision at any given moment
is not in focus. Answer: Nope. Users will accommodate to non-immersive
VR.

Once at their destination, the headset will fade down the
immersion and fade up to a map to a restaurant and some jazzy music (or
what-have-you-AR-experience-on-demand).

How do I foresee that? As a designer, I look for patterns in what has successfully worked in the past to predict what will successfully work in the future.
So what do we have in the past or present that predicts that AR/VR
combined headsets will totally be a workable thing in the future?

Two things:
1. Sunglasses.
  (Not just regular glasses as I mentioned earlier.) I see a few
  commentators skeptical how comfortable users will be wearing glasses
  that they *don’t need to*, aka vanity glasses, aka AR glasses, just to
  get AR. I think it will very much work! Because I don’t think of them
  like glasses…I think of them like sunglasses. Sunglasses are the
  harbinger of wearable tech because as we know, there are many examples
  of people wearing sunglasses for reasons that have nothing to do with
  sun protection. If people are willing to wear sunglasses at night,
  wearing AR headsets whether or not one is using AR will be an easy idea
  (see: the wearable technology fashion industry).
2. The ubiquity of
  the smartphone space-wise currently to users’ bodies. I don’t think I’m
  going out on a limb when I say that most users keep their smartphones
  with a meter’s radius of their bodies. As I’ve said on LinkedIn (and I
  should get this embroidered on a cushion), smartphones are the gateway drug for AR.
  Users are getting very used to having customizable information at their
  fingertips (or voice, as it may be). Switching from that smartphone
  interface to our vision or auditory range? Easy. Consider it done.
Until we get to the future, a few recommendations:
- The emotional nuance possible via XR is stunning. Let’s stop using fear as our primary XR coinage.
  (I’m looking at you, Plank.) Emotional reactions such as peace, wonder,
  laughter, curiosity, sadness, and honor all have a place in XR. Those
  emotions are how you are going to get not just gamers into XR.
- Stop it with the “I’ve put on a headset and I’m amazed” images. Just stop. I am looking for other
  emotions or events expressed with headsets…it’s just my hobby to
  collect these now. I’ve made my own “wearing a headset and barfing!”
  image. I’m not posting it here yet. You are welcome.
- Debate
  me! My opinion has been shaped and formed on this topic over years.
  But I’m always open to new thoughts and different points of view!
What do you think?
- Did I pick on Magic Leap too much? Maybe.
- Am I paid to espouse Microsoft Hololens? I wish!
- What comes after AR glasses? Implants? Already on the way. #omega opthamaltics
I look forward to your comments.

P.S.
I totally held off picking on any LinkedIn personal account photos of
people wearing headsets. You are an interesting crowd. On one hand, I
admire that you are *clearly* sending the message that you are pro-XR.
Way to go! On the other hand, you are going to regret that image in 20
years. I’m just saying. And to the dude’s profile I saw last night
where you are wearing 3 headsets at once: You, sir, are next level bananas. Carry on.

#Transmedia
#virtual reality #virtualworlds #crossreality #mixedreality
#augmentedreality #design #AR #VR #XR #headsets #images #eyes #wearing
#Immersion #Glasses #future #Users #Problem #Experience #Technology
#Emotions #Empathy #Empath #UX #UXinXR #MicrosoftHololens #Disney
#IllWearMySunglassesAtNight

This article originally posted at LinkedIn on November 12, 2019

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-xr-headsets-heather-dodds
November 8, 2021
What Does the Space Age Teach Us about Instructional Design?
Source: NASA

The 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Mission to the Moon is upon us. As a science lover, I’ve been soaking up all of the ceremonies
as well as the updates of future space missions ahead including
Artemis. Space science has been inside of science learning standards for
years. Several themes have emerged that intersect with instructional
design and I want to mark the 50th Anniversary of the Mission to the
Moon by noting these lessons.

First, a little history.

The
urgency within modern STEM education within the U.S. traces it’s
history directly back to geopolitical sources. With both Sputnik in
low-space orbit and a man in “space” already, the Russians were ahead
during the Cold War and fears were rampant that enemies could be
anywhere on the planet because they could look down or drop down from
above. Since the dawn of the Space Age, there has been a call to
increase the number of working scientists in the United States in order
to achieve and maintain supremacy of near-Earth space. Interestingly,
this call for more mathematicians and scientists goes on today, even
though the U.S. is undeniably one of the top three countries in the
world with viable dominance in space. Therefore, lesson one is: Never
underestimate the power of geopolitical influence in guiding overall
learning and education. If you thought science and space could float
off together un-tethered to any human notions of greed, you are very
wrong. (Reference: the entire movie Interstellar.)

Coincidentally,
the field of Instructional Design tends to trace its history to nearly
the same time period, starting in the 1950s Post-World War II America,
with ID edging out the space race by less than 10 years. ID was born to
the idea of planning and putting edges and method to the art and science of learning. How nice that ID was considered both an art and a science! That’s a theme coming up.

Next lesson: It’s all about teamwork.

This one is the biggest lesson for me. There were two types of people directly involved in the Moon Missions:

First, Ground Control.
Notice the name. Ground Control. Not Ground
We-Think-We-Have-A-Good-Idea, Can-We-Run-It-Past-You. Not
I-Have-10,000-Twitter-Followers-So- Obviously-I’m-Thinking-Clearly.
Ground Control. They called the shots. The people on the ground had
access to:
- The most amount of data. (Crossover with AI here)
- The most amount of experts.
- Prototypes and the ability to change technology setups on the fly. Hint: Cross-over with UX technology here.
I
look at the footage of the control rooms, practice areas, and hear from
the astronauts themselves and I see one theme over and over: Checklists.
Controls. Contingency plans. And training until it is automatic. And
this is a great lesson for instructional design. When designing
learning, make sure every step is documented. Make checklists. Keep
checklists. Update them. You will need to know about every fuse, knob,
switch, and procedure that your learners will need to engage. In Space
travel, there is no “hand waving” approach. That means that there are no
shortcuts or middle parts that are so ubiquitous that they are not
documented. You can’t skip launch to get to orbit. You can’t skip orbit
to get to the Moon. Checklists make me happy. Every step is important.
This is learning science.

Second, Test Pilots.
As we reflect on history, we’ll have to just weigh the balance as to why
the test pilots were only white males. Grr. But alas, the specific
personality characteristics of test pilots is the point here. Test
pilots need to know as much as they can. They need to be trained to the
point of automatic responses (just the same as police, fire, and
medical personnel on Earth). And then the most important point: they need to be able to improvise and take the leap from the known to the unknown. Another name for this characteristic is bravery. This is the art.

If I may insert an analogy here, we had our Spock on the ground and sent our Jim Kirk to space. We need both.

Instructional
designers need to have a little of both within them. They should know
everything about everything within the instruction they are working on.
(I’m not saying that they should be SME’s on the content. We have
SMEs, it’s the SME’s job to be the Subject Matter Expert.) But
instructional designers should know the learning inside and out.

Instructional designers should have a test pilot streak; the ability to say “I wonder what this will do” and be willing to try.

As I’ve written about before, most of the bad rap that online education has comes from badly done online education. We have to experiment to do better. Strap on a parachute and get up there and try something new.

Next lesson: It’s worth it to “shoot for the moon.”

There
is a quaint phrase out there that says “Shoot for the moon. If you
miss, you’ll land in the stars.” Beside the annoyance you give
scientists over the concept of accuracy, the point is to try because
other things besides your main goal are achievable; to reach out. It is
good when the instruction you designed reaches its goal. It is an
absolute delight when the instruction you designed reaches another unplanned
but desired for goal. But you don’t get that second goal until you try
for the first. It is this degree of bravery that helped us get where we
are. To this day, we have advanced in many areas of Earth habitation,
not just space exploration, with the Moon Missions. We need more bravery
in instruction to go forward.

Final lesson: After 50 years, we’ve only just started.

NASA
has plans and I entirely support their explorations both in space and
on Earth. (Indeed, without Earth, where are we going to keep our stuff?)
The blue marble in space idea reminds us that we are all in this
together. Within instructional design, brain-based learning is getting
some great traction and I support this as it erases differences of
gender and race to look at the neurological underpinnings of learning.
As I’ve noted
before, I’m researching the future of transmedia, cross-reality, and
virtual reality as it relates to instructional design and we are only
just beginning to know what it can do.

Our Moon shot is still ahead, instructional designers.

Come along for the launch. I’ll save you a seat.

#Apollo11
#Moonshot #space #NASA #spaceexploration #50thAnniversary #Transmedia
#virtual reality #virtualworlds #crossreality #mixedreality
#augmentedreality #design #instructionaldesign
#everythingilearnedfromStarTrek #Spock #JimKirk #GroundControl
#TestPilots #brainbasedlearning #neuroscience #teamwork #artandscience
#science #heatherpolicy #heatherlovesscience #5DayChallenge

This post originally appeared on LinkedIn on July 16, 2019

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-does-space-age-teach-us-instructional-design-heather-dodds This post was updated on April 3, 2026 with a better font and removal of missing images.
November 8, 2021