My nine-week course, LRNT 526, is in its last week. The blog posts I created during this course describe my critical inquiry into three separate yet connected areas of thought. My first blog post marked the beginning of my critical inquiry into Virtual Reality and its use in developing communication skills. My focus was language development in children and the first blog post explains my interest in this area “The first encounter with VR use was focused on virtual world realities (VWR), examining [the] pros and cons ” (Fahrenbruch, 2019, para. 1). My curiosity was reignited with immersive virtual reality (IVR), which is gaining attention in the education field. IVR has created new opportunities for teaching skills in environments that may be too expensive, too dangerous and inaccessible in the real world (Dalgarno & Lee, 2010). The ability to customize a learning environment specific to a learner’s needs is an affordance that is hard to ignore when considering IVR as a tool for learning (Mantovani et al., 2010; Carlson, 2017). However, my inquiry also uncovered concerns I was unable to brush aside. “Segovia and Bailenson (2009) studied the use of IVR with children and its effect on their memories, concluding that ‘third parties may be able to elicit false memories without the consent or mental effort of an individual’ (p. 388), opening a discussion around the ethical use of IVR technology with children” (Fahrenbruch, 2019, para. 3). My second post is a reflection about several teaching resources I was introduced to, “LYNDA, TedEd and Open Educational Resources (OER)“ (Fahrenbruch, 2019, para. 1). In examining these resources, I encountered challenges that resulted in a deeper reflection about critical inquiry and what it means to me. Even though critical inquiry usually does not deliver easy answers to questions, instead, it often creates more questions than I started with. However, I came to the conclusion that “inquiry-based learning also means to collaborate (Justice et al., 2009) and to contribute to a community to make the collective better than it was before” (Fahrenbruch, 2019, para. 3). This realization is represented in my third blog post in which I examine a question that arose from my investigations into IVR and its connection to the history of technology in children’s lives.
“Today’s concerns about the impact of technology on child development date back as far as the 1920”s when radio was introduced into families’ living rooms (Wartella & Jennings, 2000). Radio, movies, television and computers all elicited similar reactions and concerns. Appropriate content being a thread that wove through all of them” (Fahrenbruch, 2019. para.1).
True to critical inquiry, I ended the blog post with more questions than answers. What I have experienced during this course is the value of this process of critical inquiry. I used “[my] curiosity […] to explore and to understand” (Justice et al., 2009, p.843) my chosen topic and the need to explore and understand lead to my learning in this course (Justice et al., 2009).
References
Dalgarno, B., & Lee, M. J. W. (2010). What are the learning affordances of 3-D virtual environments? British Journal of Educational Technology, 41(1), 10–32. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2009.01038.x
Fahrenbruch, A. (2019, April 19). Immersive Virtual Reality and language development in children [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://malat-webspace.royalroads.ca/rru0053/immersive-virtual-reality-and-language-development-in-children/
Fahrenbruch, A. (2019, May 13). Critical Inquiry into Digital Learning Resources [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://malat-webspace.royalroads.ca/rru0053/critical-inquiry-into-digital-learning-resources/
Fahrenbruch, A. (2019, May 23). Is Appropriate Content Enough? [Bolg post]. Retrieved from https://malat-webspace.royalroads.ca/rru0053/is-appropriate-content-enough/
Mantovani, F., Castelnuovo, G., Gaggioli, A., & Riva, G. (2003). Virtual reality training for health-care professionals. Cyberpsychology & Behavior : The Impact of the Internet, Multimedia and Virtual Reality on Behavior and Society,6(4), 389-95. Retrieved from http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.royalroads.ca/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=05e26a24-7dbf-44fa-b4ab-7105abddc5c2%40sessionmgr4008&bdata=#db=bth&AN=10921075
Justice, C., Rice, J., Roy, D., Hudspith, B., & Jenkins, H. (2009). Inquiry-based learning in higher education: administrators’ perspectives on integrating inquiry pedagogy into the curriculum. Higher education, 58(6), 841-855. Retrieved from https://link-springer-com.ezproxy.royalroads.ca/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs10734-009-9228-7.pdf
Segovia, K. Y., & Bailenson, J. N. (2009). Virtually true: Children’s acquisition of false memories in virtual reality. Media Psychology, 12, 371–393. doi:10.1080/15213260903287267
Wartella, E. A., & Jennings, N. (2000). Children and computers: New technology – Old concerns. Future of Children, 10(2), 31–43. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.2307/1602688
You took on a complex challenge with your topic. Getting to understand immersive virtual reality (IVR) is an ongoing endeavour, and as you note exposing children to it without our really understanding potential implications seems to be a risky experiment. As stated in your Fahrenbruch (2019) quote, appropriateness of content is certainly a common thread through out the history of electronic media in particular, but also as famously stated by McLuhan, “the medium is the message.” I.e., the very medium of IVR itself has an influence in addition to the content itself, in the same way that the growth of radio, television and the Internet has greatly influenced and changed society.
I can’t think of a much better outcome to a critical inquiry than to end up, as you did, with many more questions. Thanks for sharing your explorations.
Hi Irwin, thank you for reading my post and for your thoughts. Critical inquiry is truly a challenging learning experience, but a very rewarding one as well. It allowed me to dive deep into a topic I found very intriguing. I am getting used to the fact that sometimes there are more questions than answers and it even makes me a bit excited as well, as it allows for more explorations in the future.