To end the year PLP students do a Blue Sky project and present it at an exhibition night. Typically the idea of a Blue Sky project is for the topic to be very open so that students can come up with their own ideas for the project with the idea being that students are more creative when they choose topics they are interested in. This time we were challenged to create a good Blue Sky project when more creative constraints were applied. The key constraint was that our project needed to try and solve an issue that is identified in the UN Sustainable Goals. We were put into groups (my group was Lucas, Willa, and Parker) and each group was able to choose a subject area. My group selected Education as we felt this would offer a lot of potential for interesting projects. From there we had to identify a problem within Education that is defined by the UN and each group member would complete their own project with a different take on the problem. After much back and forth we settled on “How we can keep students from dropping out of school due to academic struggles?”

My Dad bought the Oculus Rift last summer, and for a while I had been thinking about ways I could use VR in a Blue Sky project. I thought it would be really interesting to bring this technology into my project as not many people have experienced it yet. I did some research on VR and education and found there are quite a few pieces of educational software, however writing my own software in 2 weeks was definitely not an option. So then I thought about how existing software could be harnessed to improve education. After a bit of reading I discovered an interesting fact which is that reaction time is known to be correlated to a persons intelligence level, specifically their g factor. This is a field of fairly complicated psychometrics, the details of which are beyond my full understanding. However, the summary is that the g factor is a measure of how well a person will perform across a variety of cognitive tasks and as a result is considered a predictor of both intelligence and life success. This ties in well with my project as according to the following quote the g factor can be a predictor of school performance:

“The g factor is reflected in many social outcomes. Many social behavior problems, such as dropping out of school, chronic welfare dependency, accident proneness, and crime, are negatively correlated with g independent of social class of origin.^[86] Health and mortality outcomes are also linked to g, with higher childhood test scores predicting better health and mortality outcomes in adulthood (see Cognitive epidemiology).”

Based on this research the next step was to consider the idea that if reaction time and g are correlated, then improvement in reaction time should lead to a corresponding improvement in intelligence. Therefore the driving investigation of my project was to look at whether the highly immersive experience of VR gaming can be used to improve reaction time.

My original plan for the project involved using a reaction test and an IQ test such that I could measure test subjects (myself and others) and see whether the VR gaming was causing improvement over time. From the beginning I could see that this method was going to have some problems, as to collect any kind of meaningful statistics I would need to be able to test on a large number of people, have a control group who were taking the tests but not doing the VR gaming and realistically I don’t believe you can expect to see a noticeable change in a person’s IQ in the space of 2-3 weeks. However, I found a reaction test which I used, and then investigated IQ tests. This proved more challenging as there are many terrible spam websites offering IQ tests. I finally found one with a thorough IQ test, however it crashed multiple times and the test was identical each time. This meant it wasn’t really suitable to show improvement via the VR as anyone taking the same test over and over can be expected to improve their results. Due to this, I changed my approach to focus more on measuring reaction time before and immediately after spending time VR gaming to see whether this showed any significant improvement.

The results of this were remarkably impressive. I was expecting a slightly improvement, but my results were significantly better after playing in the VR. I then tried the same test sequence on my sister and she also got a big improvement in her reaction time. I didn’t end up capturing as much data around this as I had originally hoped, however I think my results do show that there is a definite potential for VR to be used this way. There is definitely a growing movement that VR can bring huge benefits to education particularly for challenged students.

At the outset of the project I wasn’t really confident with the idea of bringing an expensive gaming PC and the Oculus Rift into the exhibition environment. However, I wanted to be able to present something that would help people to understand more about the VR gaming experience. The best option to do this was to create a mixed reality video and fortunately there was a free piece of software called LIV that I could use. Although the instructions to install and setup LIV seemed relatively straightforward, the actual process involved a fair amount of frustration. I needed to set up a green screen, tripod and webcam and then configure the LIV program to calibrate the virtual controllers. After following all the steps I had it “almost” working, but ran into one problem after another including the game appearing in black and white, the green screen projection being inverted, the camera angle for the game being first way too low and then later at a 90 degree angle. After many hours and working through all the steps multiple times, I finally got it to all come together. I’m glad I persevered as the mixed reality video looks awesome and is actually now really easy for me to set up again.

As the exhibition got closer, I made the decision that bringing the VR would really add to the overall experience. I had been experimenting with making my own level within the game, and realized that for the exhibition I would need a short and easy level for people to try. This would mean I could get people in and out of the headset quicker, so that more people would get the chance to play. This level turned out to be quite the challenge for some people but for others it was definitely not very hard.

For the exhibition all the students were assigned to rooms based on the themes of their projects and how those aligned with the UN Sustainable Goals. While I was part of the physical health group, I was assigned my own room, so that I could safely set up the PC, Oculus and LIV environment without overwhelming other projects. The setup involved a lot of pieces, but actually came together and the gaming/Oculus system ran well, and my LIV environment enabled me to capture a bunch of cool video. The other really fun thing about LIV is that the mixed reality output shows up on the computer monitor in real time, which meant that people waiting for their turn could engage in the experience of the person wearing the headset.

This was definitely my most enjoyable exhibition experience. I had a lot of people come and try it out, and it’s always quite inspiring to see the first reaction of people when they get into VR. The most frequent comment is “Wow” and the general feedback is that it is incredible and way beyond what people are expecting. A lot of students came by multiple times, and wanted to try and engage in some of the harder levels.

In terms of learning I think the biggest growth for me was taking on a project where I had no previous knowledge and didn’t really know exactly how it would all come together. I needed to learn and investigate psychometrics, reaction test method, IQ tests, mixed reality video and VR gaming level modding. With a little bit more time, I feel I could have taken this project even further with more investigative data and bigger test groups.