Dave Maze (left) with George Gallant and actors for the video production (Photo courtesy Lethbridge College)

By Justin Goulet

New project brings Virtual Reality to Lethbridge College program

Sep 2, 2019 | 8:00 AM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – An interactive project out of Lethbridge College is set to offer students a realistic experience like no other.

The school has announced that as part of a one-year study, 360-degree video will be used to create two different training scenarios with live actors. Once this is completed, learners studying in the college’s School of Justice Studies will be able to enter the scenarios and interact with the people in the scene.

The study is being conducted by Dave Maze, chair of the School of Justice Studies, and George Gallant. Gallant is an instructor in the Digital Communications and Media program.

As it stands, students learn communication theory in a classroom setting and then practice their communication techniques on a simulator. Afterwards, they move on to face-to-face human tests.

Feedback found that the simulator was great for getting repetitions down on how to properly communicate but was not fully preparing students for real life scenarios that come with many variables.

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“I thought VR (Virtual Reality) would be a way they could practice those skills and be one step closer to interacting with a live person,” Maze stated in a Lethbridge College press release.

Actors involved will play the roles of citizens involved in a crisis situation.

“When you’re in VR, there is no peripheral, there is no outside of the screen – everywhere you look, you’re in the location,” Gallant said.

“So, it feels like you’re in the in the actual experience. When you’re in VR, and somebody’s yelling at you in VR, you feel it. With VR, it’s not just a passive watching experience, it’s an emotional experience. You feel what’s going on and that’s what makes it important.”

ORIGINS

The instructors pitched the idea as a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning research project. They were later recipients of Lethbridge College’s internal Scholar Teaching and Research grant.

Over the next two months, the duo will produce and test the video scenarios. For the Winter 2019 semester, the project will be tested with students.

Maze will use two classes as test subjects. One class will continue with the current curriculum, while the other class will implement the VR training.

To determine the success of the project, Maze and Gallant will observe final test results and distribute a student survey. The two will team with a Calgary-based company to use a state-of-the-art biometrics belt, which measures factors like heart rate, blood pressure and brain waves to fully study students’ reactions in the high-pressure scenarios.

“With the biometrics, we can digitally record what the students are going through,” Maze stated.

“Then we can take students through and show them the different touch points during the scenario. They’ll be able to see where they all of a sudden, they became stressed and their blood pressure and their heart rate went up, or where it dropped all the sudden after a certain part of the scenario ended. That’ll give us a measurement of how the students who didn’t experience the VR scenario did against how the students did have the VR experience.”

THE SCENARIOS

Two scenarios are set to be developed. One will feature a domestic abuse situation and another involving a traffic stop. Both will allow students to make choices along the way that will either lead to the resolution or escalation of the situation at hand.

The instructors have already fielded questions from police and corrections agencies interested in the technology and eventual findings of the study. The project will be completed by mid-2020.

-With files from Paul Kingsmith, Lethbridge College