Dwight Global Online School educators Elizabeth Hutton, Felicia Chen, and Stephanie Castle were the featured keynote speakers at the 2024 Metaverse and Education conference, held May 7 at New York City’s Lycée Français.
The conference welcomed educators, researchers, and industry professionals to share and discuss the integration of virtual and augmented reality into the education system. Workshops and demonstrations highlighted the applications of immersive technologies in education today.
Hutton, Dwight Global’s Head of Academic and Student Affairs, said the conference was an opportunity to expand the thinking about where and how education occurs, explore partnerships with industry representatives, and to showcase virtual reality’s benefits to learning in both the online and physical classroom.
“As a fully online school, we had a glaring need to find a way to deliver science labs that were effective, engaging, and that advanced learning while simultaneously preparing students for labs in the university setting,” said Hutton.
Chen and Castle are both IB science educators who, along with Hutton, have taught and held leadership roles in various countries. The teachers said they were brought together at Dwight Global by their mutual passion for innovation in education, and the desire to transform the online learning experience of science students, particularly for practical work.
Discovering virtual reality, the teachers first created biology VR labs, in partnership with Victory XR, and then chemistry labs and other experiences at Dwight Global.
“Our classroom goals and objectives haven’t changed,” said Hutton. “We strive for communication, kinesthetic learning, immersive experiences, critical thinking, creativity and problem solving.” Virtual reality is just a new medium we have the opportunity to deliver robust science labs.
Chen said teachers underwent training, and that protocols were set in place with best practice for onboarding and transition. Systems were established to maintain a supportive VR online community within the school.
“Looking forward, we are excited to continue to expand VR to more courses using our experiences from implementing VR in our classrooms. We also plan to continue to have conversations between educators and providers so that VR offerings best align with the curriculum and standards. We hope to continue leveraging the benefits to transform the way all subjects are delivered,” Chen said.
At Dwight Global, what began as a solution to overcome the access of science labs for Dwight Global students, has grown into an impressive demonstration of how students flourish, collaborate, connect and lead in the same space, joining other students from all around the world.
In their keynote presentation, the Dwight Global educators highlighted how their work is transforming education, and how their experience and expertise is valuable “…to create a two-way conversation where industries can better align with supporting the needs of the teacher, the students, the classroom, and curriculum standards—-and together be at the table of making educational policy decisions,” Hutton said.
Chen said that VR is advantageous because it allows students to complete work individually as well as together in class. VR science labs are efficient, too, speeding up experiences to achieve learning outcomes while still having an awareness about the actual time needed, she noted.
At the conference, Chen and Castle also led a second presentation session, a comprehensive exploration into the way VR has transformed and fostered practical science skills. The contents of their session were similar to presentations the teachers have shared previously, such as their 2024 online presentation hosted by Victory XR.
In their conference session, Castle said the opportunities for improving teaching and learning for students have been notable. Students collaborate from anywhere in the world, and are able to take on leadership roles within the virtual space.
“When they are in the virtual world, they feel as though they are experiencing the investigation as the 3D hand-on practical work it is meant to be, due to the kinesthetic and immersive environment,” said Castle. “Notably, this provides for an inherently more emotional experience than if they had just seen it as a 2D simulator on their web browser.”
“Additionally, it challenges them to think critically about the role of each component in the lab, for example why they are mixing different solutions together and the order in which they may choose to do things,” Castle continued. “Ultimately, it is a creative scientific endeavor in which students seek to answer research questions using the scientific method, and using the equipment available in the Virtual Space—and they have a lot of fun doing it!”
Dwight Global’s conference team agrees that implementation of VR combines the expertise of industry leaders and the pedagogical expertise of teachers in the classroom to collaboratively transform teaching and learning.
“We’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of what the future has to offer, and together we can make Virtual Reality every child’s reality,” Castle said.
