We saw a real need for our pre-service
teachers to be able to put their theory
into practice before going into an
actual live classroom, and the VR
technology helps to fill that gap. Hi my
name is Shannon and I'm the Simulation
Specialist for Swinburne Online. Our
simulations are powered by Mursion who
are a VR software company that allows us
to provide our students with the
immersive experience we wanted to be
able to give them online.
In the simulation I ran my lesson with five
kids and you were the director because I
was your classroom, they were your kids
that you were talking to and it's your
lesson it went as if you were a teacher
it's just like doing the real thing.
The main difference between Mursion VR
technology compared to others out there
in the market is that ours always
involves a real human element in the
loop with real-time responses. My
favorite part of the simulation was the
way the avatars behaved like real kids
and actually a few of the kids answers
threw me. And I went, 'oh how am I gonna
respond to that' because it wasn't what
you expected definitely didn't feel
scripted it felt very yeah organic.
The Simulation Specialist's role is playing
all of the characters, so we do this via
a controller and motion tracking sensors
for all their movements and we voice
them all with the help of voice morphing
software so that they all have their own
distinctive sound.
I think the simulation will build
confidence in a lot of people mostly
because the feeling of delivering that
lesson is exactly the same as that first
lesson you have to do on a placement. So
doing that ten times and then go into a
placement means that first lesson is so
much easier to deliver. When the students
go out in the industry they're taking
their training they received in VR with
them and it's helping to give them the
confidence in the technology to be able
to take it to a much broader audience.
I would not only recommend other
education students to use this but other
education people full-stop, because
things have changed, children have
changed, teachers have changed, schools
have changed, so you know we need to keep
changing and evolving with the times as
well, so I definitely would recommend it.
