IMMERSIVE TECHNOLOGY
Leading Georgian into the future
A student nurse enters the small room to check a patient
who has just come into Emergency Department. The
man in his fifties is labouring to breathe. His shoulders
are heaving as he struggles, and he is only able to speak
four or five words as he strains for his next breath. He's
exhibiting serious signs of respiratory distress.
She picks up the medications his wife brought in and sees
that he has high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes.
She proceeds to physically examine him, putting a heart
monitor on and taking his blood pressure. Then, she
makes her recommendation for treatment.
While this scenario was very realistic, the student was able
to do all of this without being anywhere near the patient,
through an immersive virtual reality scenario.
As we've learned through the pandemic, learning through
video conferencing and textbooks works well in many
remote teaching situations, but health-care students can
learn better in a face-to-face hospital, anatomy lab or
cadaver lab. Just over a year ago at Georgian College,
this was only possible in real life. Now, wearing a VR
headset immerses students in an entirely new world of the
professor's choosing.
"Virtual reality, unlike any other educational technology,
provides experiential learning, where students can do
things with their hands, think critically and make decisions
that have measurable results," says Rob Theriault,
Immersive Technology Lead at Georgian.
As a professor in the Paramedic program, with a Master's
in Educational Technology from the University of British
Columbia, Rob first became interested in virtual and
augmented reality when he saw a patient assessment
in virtual reality at a conference. From there, he began
looking into ways to use these realities for experiential
learning at Georgian.
He was assigned to the position of Immersive Technology
Lead well before the pandemic, illustrating the importance
Georgian had already placed on immersive technology
and experiential learning platforms.
Working out of the Centre for Teaching and Learning, Rob
helps faculty to integrate virtual or augmented realty into
their curricula, get them comfortable with the technology
and support them as they implement it. On the side, he's
learning how to build virtual worlds.
"In many cases, virtual reality is even better than in-person
teaching," says Rob. "What really excites me about this is
the potential for students to learn in multiple scenarios, in
an environment that's more realistic than what they get in
an (in-person) lab, because in the lab it's the same every
day of the week. Occasionally, the students role play but
they don't look like sick people, they're just pretending.
Whereas, in virtual reality, they're seeing someone who
actually looks sick, who's struggling to breathe, whose
colour may be different from a lack or oxygen … Even
though it's animated, it's realistic enough to give them
better visual cues."
It's not just health-care programs that are benefiting from
the new technology. So far, Indigenous Studies, Veterinary
Technician, Skilled Trades, Tourism, Event Management,
Architectural Technology and Fine Arts programs are also
moving to integrating virtual reality in their courses.
Watch Architecture Professor Costan Boiangiu
use virtual reality to design a house.
28 GEORGIANVIEW 2021 SPRING
FACULTY SPOTLIGHT
Rob Theriault,
Immersive
Technology Lead
