In one role I develop self-paced technical training courses for the military. A lot of these courses come with much bigger budgets than a K-12 classroom could ever hope to have access to, and the self-guided nature of the courses means that my "classroom" is essentially non-existent. My teaching context may not be "traditional", but I still wanted to weigh in on this thread.
Recently, my work has started to investigate the possibilities of AR. This OER has pointed to some great points in support of its use in this context, such as the videos in the "Corporate" section, and the assertion that "by pointing an AR device at equipment, you can access information about its features instantly (Yaskevich, 2017)". For the last few years, I've been designing familiarization courseware for the Navy. The background in a nutshell is that a new ship is being built here in Halifax that is different from all other ships the future staff have worked on. Our training needs to prep them on the layout, new equipment, systems, etc. A lot of the time, what the sailors needs to know is the operational steps to complete an action or perform maintenance on a specific piece of equipment that is new to them. The problem is that they'll be doing hours and hours of training before shipping out, and might not actually have to perform the action until months or even years in the future. I can see major potential for the use of AR here, as it could enable just-in-time review training when the need arises. There are bound to be technical and security issues with using mobile-devices onboard the ship (and *without a doubt* a slow uptake of this type of technology when IE9 is still the preferred browser of choice for many...) but from a purely academic standpoint, I can see this technology benefiting the learners in a very real way.
Hi Marcia. This appears to be a excellent application for AR/VR. It sounds as though once the ship is built the personnel will already be trained somewhat to operate it. In many cases we discuss how the cost of AR/VR is prohibitive, but this sounds like the application may save costs. From a learning perspective - do you think that the military personnel will require extra training once the ship is built, or will the AR/VR be sufficient?
Hi Marcia,
Thanks so much for sharing your experience. I would also find this type of training useful for those who are in an acting capacity for a head custodian role. They would have completed the training but unless they are in the role they may not get a chance to practice for months until they get an acting opportunity. A JIT refresher would be very handy at that time.