The project is between the York County School Division, which received a $2 million grant from the Department of Defense Education Activity to pilot it, and Old Dominion University’s Virginia Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation Center in Suffolk. DoDEA works with military-connected education agencies. York County officials said 35 percent of its student population is military-connected.
“It is like an ‘Amazing Race’ meets ‘Jumanji’ meets pick-your-own-fate kind of activity,” said Jessica Johnson, director for STEM and educational partnerships at VMASC.
The lesson modules — designed to be less than 15 minutes —will provide experiences to help students navigate real-world scenarios in the language they are learning. For example, Spanish students could navigate an airport in Mexico or visit a host family in Spain. Essentially, the lessons are role-playing games.
The modules are being built to serve the needs of York County students. Johnson said the virtual reality aspect will be accompanied by other resources, such as vocabulary words to learn before starting and activities to complete after the game, such as writing a “travel blog.”
“So think of it as a holistic suite of resources that you’re not going to get somewhere else, from just an off-the-shelf VR experience,” she said. “This is for them, with them.”
York County officials said one of the most exciting parts of the project is that teachers have a say.
For example, teachers want students to spend more time talking, so developers created multiple roles in each game so students must play as a group. Each role will hold a “key,” such as a map so that students will have to communicate to complete their missions. Only one student will wear a virtual reality headset, while the others will play along on tablets. The modules are also being designed with “replayability” in mind so that students can play the game again in a different role and still gain something new.
The idea for the program came about because world language teachers were finding that, even after years of instruction, students were still not proficient. Recall and textbook activities that are a large portion of the curriculum were not enough. After some research, division staff found potential in a virtual reality model.
Zabia Evans, a graduate student in ODU’s speech language pathology program, is working on the project to better understand how to integrate language and technology and support the overall learning experience. Evans said research shows students retain more when strategies include “sensory input,” or through kinesthetic learning, which involves physical activity, rather than rote memorization.
John Shull, a VMASC lead project scientist, said virtual reality research also backs this up. People retain what they’ve learned longer if there is some interaction in the lesson. For example, if someone participates in a virtual reality lesson on making a latte, they will remember the steps better than watching a video with the same instructions.
Karen Cagle, York County’s director of curriculum and instruction, said the program is more than an “immersive” experience. Collaboration and critical thinking are a large part of the lessons.
“I love the problem-solving and the creativity and the collaboration that the students have to have in this environment,” she said. “It is so powerful for the language acquisition but also for preparing our kids for much more.”
The virtual reality makes up only part of the grant. Funds will also pay for professional development, summer enrichment programs and other strategies to enhance instruction. An early version of the first module is expected to be ready for testing by May, about a year after VMASC began working with the division. The finished product will include multiple modules for each of the four levels of Spanish and French.
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