English Language Simulations Augmented With 360-Degrees Spherical Videos (ELSA 360°-Videos): ‘Virtual Reality’ Real Life Learning!

Abstract

Learning technology adoption demands technical know-how, time and money. For these reasons, many educators continue teaching using ‘old-school’ methods that are not aligned to the current needs and wants of today’s learners. A case in point in learning technology adoption is the use of virtual reality (VR). Although VR use in the field of education goes as far back as 50+ years, it has never achieved widespread application. Nevertheless, the start of the 4th Industrial Revolution and its ‘disruptions’ has brought cheaper and more user-friendly VR technologies into the public realm, for instance for gaming. The boom in VR technology also brought new products into the consumer market, for the creation of straightforward VR content, one of these being 360° video cameras. Now, instead of having to work with complicated computer-generated VR contents, educators can create immersive ‘real life’ contents using 360° cameras to deliver lessons anytime, anywhere. Our English Language Simulations Augmented with 360-degrees spherical videos or ELSA 360°-Videos is one such project. Focusing on a degree level course on English for Professional and Workplace Interactions, ELSA 360°-Videos help undergraduates to experience what it is like to be in a meeting room, to see how colleagues react to each other as they share ideas and deal with issues, and to learn critical communicative skills to succeed in the modern workplace. The novelty value of ELSA 360°-Videos lies in the fact that it is unscripted and recorded under actual test conditions, in other words authentic and real. The advantages of ELSA 360°-Videos are: Contents are uploaded onto YouTube and are freely available online; Learners can learn anytime, anywhere they want; Better immersion can be achieved using cheap VR goggles powered by learners’ smartphones; Weaker learners who need more time for comprehension now have the freedom to revise on their own accord. Being in its early stages, the benefits of 360° videos in language learning content delivery are already apparent. The challenges now are to create high production value contents in a professional manner, and to promote wider use of this technology to Malaysian educators from primary, secondary to tertiary institutions.

Keywords: Education 4.0, English language, Immersive learning, Spherical videos, Virtual reality