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Maximizing Summer Downtime to Prep for VR Simulations

Episode 45: July 19th, 2024
Hosted by Bill Ballo, Mitch Luker, and Jon Brouchoud.

Key Highlights:

 

Effective Summer Preparation for VR Readiness

Jon Brouchoud and Bill Ballo discuss the strategic use of summer to prepare VR simulations, ensuring systems are up-to-date and ready for the fall. They emphasize the importance of this quiet period to make necessary adjustments and updates, facilitating a smooth transition when the academic rush begins.

Integrating Realism into VR Training

Mitch Luker details their process of refining VR simulations to enhance realism and educational value. He discusses how he updates scenarios, like pediatric croup, to include dynamic elements such as stridor and coughing, which he controls in real-time to mimic real-life clinical signs more closely.

Cross-Disciplinary Use of VR Technology

Bill Ballo highlights the versatility of Acadicus in supporting various educational programs beyond nursing, such as EMT training. He notes the importance of VR in providing comprehensive, immersive learning experiences across different disciplines, enriching the educational content and student engagement.

Streamlining VR Setup and Management

Mitch Luker shares their approach to managing VR resources efficiently, preparing template rooms that can be quickly customized for different teaching scenarios. This method reduces setup time and allows

 

Full Transcript:

 

Jon Brouchoud: Welcome to Simulation Pulse Live, episode number 45. I’m Jon Brouchoud, and this is Bill Ballo from Madison College.

Bill Ballo: Hello, everyone.

Jon Brouchoud: We might have a little bit of a short one today. We were just talking about what’s going on. And really, it’s kind of quiet during the summer in the world of academics and simulation. So there’s not a whole lot of activity. Everybody’s on vacation, which is great, but we thought we’d talk this week a little bit about what you can be doing during the summer to help prepare for fall, specifically with regards to setting up VR for simulation. So there’s a couple of different things that we could get into, but just kind of start there. How does that sound, Bill?

Bill Ballo: Yeah, that sounds great. Most of my work this month. And, you know, it’s been minimal work, to be honest, but most of my work this month, and even towards the end of last month, has been sort of sealing up what we did for spring. You know, just kind of going back through thinking about what we did, thinking about the things that, you know, when I have nursing come to me and say like, hey, we need to make this change or we need to make that change. I’ll put them in my notes, which are usually on my phone over here. And then, for me, it’s kind of going back through, looking at those notes and going, alright, what is it that I missed? What have I not done? Because when fall comes up, it’s not like, oh, well, I have a little time to get ready and all that kind of stuff. It’s pretty much hit the ground running. Because I think I’m going to look at my calendar here. And my apologies if I keep looking over this way a little bit. But I think my first simulation comes up. It does. My first simulation comes up before the school year actually officially starts. So that’s how quick it runs. And the thing I was just talking about with Melissa today is I don’t just do nursing simulation. I actually had said, if I did nursing simulation only, my life would be a little bit easier. But I also feel like it would be a little less full because of what we do at the college. And we use Acadicus. We are heavy, heavy users of Acadicus. probably more than anything else, but we also use other programs. And so I have to sit and learn other programs and figure out how to work those as well. So my first simulation, so to speak, comes up on August 19th. That’s quick. Our school year starts like the first day of school, I want to say is September 3rd. It is. It’s September 3rd. And then I have a meeting about VR opportunities right there on September 3rd.

Jon Brouchoud: Wow. Wow. It’s coming up fast. Less than a month till your first simulation.

Bill Ballo: Right. And that week, then I have three things going on in the XR Center.

Jon Brouchoud: Wow.

Bill Ballo: That’s the first week of classes.

Jon Brouchoud: First week. You’re getting started early. That’s great.

Bill Ballo: Yeah. It just comes so fast. What I need to do and one of the things that I’ve done is is to prep some of the simulations like during the summer. So I’ve got a little time off. I’m able to, you know, to take some time and do a little bit of work. And it’s kind of nice, because some of it I get to overlap as part of my Acadicus work. And because I’m doing that not only for the college, but I’m also then doing it for any Acadicus users as well. So that’s kind of nice. I have Acadicus up. And I’m going to open up some of the simulations that I created. So, Jon, is it okay? I share my screen here.

Jon Brouchoud: Of course. Welcome, Mitch Luker. Mitch Luker from NWTC is joining us.

Bill Ballo: Hey, Mitch.

Mitch Luker: I went into the wrong meeting. I have the, to just view and then the panelists one.

Bill Ballo: Oh, yeah. So and I put some stuff into the export, my export library, right? So I can now take this and export it or import it into people’s rooms or whatever it may be. So our EMT program, we were doing some simulations with EMT. And one of the things I thought was, well, these can be really useful overall. There are some things I need to change. They’re not copyrighted or anything like that, but there are some things that I need to change to make sure that it sort of works for everybody. And so essentially all I did was to take some of the simulations that are already there and even some of the simulations that I had created months ago, a year ago, two years ago, finally getting to that point where I’m like, hey, I need to take these simulations and I need to actually create them within Acadicus. And so that’s what I did. So I have the, you know, abdominal pain, appendicitis, a pediatric croup, a STEMI, syncope, and there’s going to be more than I’m adding in here. I’m still working on getting those, you know, going through my, my, my simulations that I’ve written and putting them in. It’s a really slow process because obviously my full-time job is that I work for Madison College, and there’s just a ton of stuff that I do there. Then I’ll go back to my regular library. Then some of these match up. Ella Mason is a good example here. And all I did with this was, I mean, this is a pediatric croup case. So there’s not a ton that you have to do to prep the case. You know, you want to have the right mannequin in there. You want to have the right patient in there. I did put a 12 lead in here, a pediatric 12 lead. that I pulled in that I liked. And then, you know, obviously I just went through and said, here’s some of the medications that I need. So I used the medication creator to actually create, there’s our aspirin and stuff like that, that I used to create. Now, some of you are gonna go, you’re not giving aspirin to that patient, are you? No, no, but I want my EMT students to have everything on hand that they could potentially use so that they can make that failure. right, so that they can go, oh, well, let’s give her some aspirin or something. No, no, no, bad. Now, none of them have done that. But I want them to have that possible failure there. I want them to have the possibility to make that mistake. And so with Ella, all I’ve done in the simulation manager, I really haven’t done much, to be honest, is that I just, where is she? no pediatric, is that I’ve just kind of set her up with what I would expect some of her vital signs to be. And actually, I want her pulse rate to be a little higher, so I’ll just set that. And then as far as animation goes, she’s a little pained. I felt like that was the best way to seat her. And then as far as respiratory goes, I actually control this on the fly. I wanted them to see some mild retractions initially, but then I control it on the fly by making her cough occasionally. And I also occasionally give her stridor as well. Because that’s something that we may hear with some of our croup patients. And so I just do that on the fly. So I just hit that on the fly instead of, you know, instead of having that on the entire time. And then I actually act as the father in this because I don’t do a very good pediatric voice. So I just act as the father in it. So these are some of the things that I’ve been preparing over the summer and taking essentially what this is for build out and then pulling it into my exports so that can then be imported into a shared library or whatever it may be.

Jon Brouchoud: That’s awesome. Thank you very much for sharing that. You know, before you joined Mitch, we were just talking about how we can use the summer months to get ready for fall since fall is obviously we need to hit the ground running. And Bill was mentioning that he has a simulation coming up. It’s going to be less than a month for the first simulation of fall. So it’s coming up quick. And what can we do during summer to get ready for it? And so Bill was sharing these simulations that he’s working on and. getting ready, building the scenes, you know, testing it out, getting some feedback, you know, so that way you’re ready to go when fall comes.

Mitch Luker: And I do a similar thing to Bill. I have my med surge room. That is just I took Millie and I throw her in there and kind of like how Bill said, like he just has stuff in there and I have stuff in there so that if someone on the fly is like, hey, I need to do this real quick. OK, I can go in my med surg room. I can add three or four things, you know, that are specific to that case. I make the few tweaks like Bill showed where, you know, change the vitals, add some edema, give them crackles. OK, boom, we’re ready to go. so that way i’m not having to start from scratch every time which even in Acadicus isn’t a big deal always because the environments are really easy just to load and it’s not like i have to put all the walls up and everything else but to give it more of that realism like i wanted to have some flowers on the side table and things like that so i could do all that on the front end just to add that realness but and be ready on the fly so like during summer I think about those type like I built an ICU room so now if we want something more critical care I have that room set up and ready to go and then I literally just take and then you hit save and I give it a new name so like I’ll call it you know like we have a scenario coming up in a couple weeks where I’ll have four different patients that will run through So I took Millie and took my med surg room and I just saved the changes for her to have a stroke. And then I saved that one is in WTC, uh, med surge stroke in WTC, med surge, uh, CHF. And so then I just load them and all the vitals, everything is set and it’s just ready to run.

Jon Brouchoud: That’s amazing.

Bill Ballo: Yeah, that’s a good way to do it. You know that because we will get I know Mitch this happens to you a lot myself as well, where we’ll get somebody that will go, hey, next week, and you go, Oh, Oh, next week, let me look through, like I’ve been, I’ve been scheduling out two to three weeks in advance, but let me look through and see if Wednesday at one o’clock next week, I can, you know, whatever, fill in the blanks, right? And so you do have to have some of that stuff just set, just ready to go. Um, and I do, I, so I probably complicated a little bit more than I need to. What I’ll actually do is I’ll export it. and put it like in that export folder. This is the way it works in my brain. So everybody else may look at this and go, that is weird. But I take it, I export it, and then I’ll rename it in that export. And then sometimes I’ll re-import it. So that what then I’ve done is I’ve, and I know I can create a new scene and all of that. But what I’ve essentially done is I’ve now taken what I created, pulled it into a different folder so that it’s held there. And I know that nothing is gonna change there. So that when I come back in, because I have this massive list, so that when I come back in, I know exactly what I’m looking at before I then re-import it. and then make a whole bunch of changes to it too. So now I can just take that, import it back in like that on the fly. I can take it and import it back in and I’ve already got my initial template. And then from there, like you said, Mitch, then go ahead and change it any which way we want. But I sort of leave templates out in the export. And again, maybe the weird way to do things. It just seems to work in my brain, I guess.

Mitch Luker: Yeah, I don’t do the export part, but the key is so when I’m going to do something different to one of my as I call my template rooms or template scenarios is you have to go in and hit save first and rename it. and then go into the new one. So what you’re doing is actually a way to prevent that accidental. Oh, I edited my template room and now I have to go back and undo the edits that I made so that I can keep my template room, my template room, because I have gone in and made the changes and then save. And I’m like. I just totally changed my template room. Yep. I just did that before you hit save. If you change it, if you catch it before you hit save, you can just reload. But then you have to redo everything you did.

Bill Ballo: Yeah. Yeah. And I just did that recently with one of my cardiac arrest scenarios that that that I Um, I moved the BVM and I hit save on the scene and the BVM is now not exactly where I want it to be, but I didn’t panic. I went, wait a minute, hold on. I already held this out as a template in my export files. It’s almost like my little repository of safety, like, Ooh, okay. Now I can just pull this back in and I can reset things and I’m good. It’s a little repository of safety. So yeah, I don’t know, maybe again, and even the developers may look at that and go, why do you do that? You could do this so much easier if you just did X, Y, and Z. But for some reason, it’s what worked in my head. And I’ve been doing it now for, I don’t know, a year or so, and it’s just worked well. But yeah, and that’s one of the ways that we prep, right? This is one of the ways we get ready because we know that when we hit fall, it’s going to go crazy. Like fall and spring are going to be crazy for us. Summer is going to be a little cooler. And that’s the time to go in there and do all that maneuvering around that we do.

Jon Brouchoud: You know, and even though we built Acadicus to really, you know, extend from the existing modality of simulation. So you don’t really have to like learn a whole new thing necessarily. It’s still an innovation piece. There is still stuff you have to learn. And when you’re trying to fold something that isn’t as familiar into your program. you’re going to have to do that during a time when you’re not frantically busy keeping up with existing obligations. And summer is kind of a nice little oasis for that. You know, everybody wants to check out, take a vacation. That’s important. You got to do that. But if you can get to the school and set it up and, you know, last week we heard from Ricky from NWTC that worked with Mitch on some recordings. And that’s an opportunity that you can get in the summer. I bet it would be real hard to get Ricky’s time sometime in like mid-October. you know, through, you know, early December, like it’s just not going to happen. So then these things don’t get done. So I think summer is a really important time, even though it’s, you know, it’s kind of your downtime, but it’s an opportunity to get, if you’re working on innovation, you’re going to have to learn something new and bring that into the program. It’s a great time to do that.

Bill Ballo: It’s also my time to start planning on the training for my new technicians that are coming on board. So that’s something that’s new for us at Madison. Essentially, it’s been myself running most of the scenarios, but we’re expanding to the point where we’re gonna need some extra hands. And so the discussion is starting like, when are we gonna do it? How are we gonna do it? Where are we gonna do it? And then as well, you know, like who? And so that’s sort of what I’m working on now is like, here’s my training program. This is what we’re going to do. This is how we’re going to run it. I had an EMT instructor come in and shadow me for a couple of SIM days. When I say SIM days, we’re talking, you know, it’s an eight hour day. We’re running about 16 simulations in that timeframe. Sometimes more, almost to 24. And so we’re just running it in that, in that timeframe. Now the EMT simulations are a lot of times much quicker because essentially what we’re doing is stabilization and then bringing a patient to where we need to bring a patient to. But you know, it can even be more like clinical experience and they’re low level. EMT is relatively low level. And so they’re just learning. So, yeah, so I don’t even know where I was going with this, but so this is my time to sort of, you know, figure out who, what, where, when, and how when it comes to training new people. And we’re gonna be starting a training coming up in the fall for new people. And I gotta figure out, what do I wanna go over first? So that’s another thing that I think summer is really good for, because there’s no way I can think about how I’m gonna be training people when we’re in the fall or in the spring already. That’s just not gonna happen. So summertime is a great time to start thinking about training, how I’m going to do it, you know, those kind of things.

Jon Brouchoud: Good call, good call for sure. And another thing we hear from other organizations that are working with Acadicus is they like to use summer to engage with local industry. So, you know, you’ve got this VR lab that you’ve invested in as a school, and that’s like a superpower, right? It’s like having a holodeck and you can do all these different things. And so, you know, you’ve got local fire safety, police, EMT crews that, you know, they all have to do training like this. And you’ve got this lab, you don’t want to just sit there empty all summer, you want to get this engaged. And, you know, they don’t have that academic schedule that everybody else has, you know, so they’re available, and they’re eager to get in. And if you bring them in and show them a couple of things you can do with this, that just blows their mind and sets the stage, and then they want to come back and keep coming back. And it’s a really great way to engage the community.

Mitch Luker: Yep, agreed. Well, and also it’s a chance that, um, because one thing to think about is industry partners, they work year round. They’re not like a school where they have semesters. And so like, if you like, we have what’s called CTED, which is our community training, um, and education development. So that’s where like hospitals in our areas and, um, other businesses when they want training and they want our college to provide that, they can go through them. And so, you know, if you were going to be looking at doing something with a hospital system, using summertime is a great time because you don’t have the demand on the lab from, you know, the student usage, but then you can also use it as a way to educate out in the community. and your, you know, other businesses that, you know, we feed, you know, in Green Bay, we feed several hospitals, a lot of nurses. And so being able to, you know, utilize that time in a way to benefit the partners that you’re working with and use, utilizing them as a, not only as a education opportunity, but income generation for your VR lab. We know that money is tight in all academic settings right now, and so even if you can, you’re probably not going to pay for everything, but you know, anything right now is a huge benefit. And so being able to take this and work with them to develop a scenario, I think about like blood administration, hospitals have to do checkoffs on their staff’s skills and different things all the time. And you can use that as a way to have that work within your facility and Maybe, like I said, maybe generate a little income just to kind of help, like, here’s where the value of this comes from. We can use it not only for an education, which is an expense, but make us back a little bit of that.

Jon Brouchoud: Absolutely. You know, and eventually, and you’re, you’re just getting started with that too. So it helps sort of offset some of the costs, but as that program scales, it eventually could reach a point where the VR lab is like a profit source, right? You’re actually, you know, you’re generating significant revenue that can support the ongoing development of your program. Again, it’s a superpower. Like you’ve got this, this really powerful holodeck and you can do all these things with it. And as soon as you get that word out and people see what they can do, um, they start coming in and that’s extremely valuable. And, you know, those continuing education credits can have a cost associated with them, depending on how you do it. And there’s just a lot of opportunity to use that resource to engage and to, you know, potentially make your VR lab something that’s not spending money on, you’re actually generating money with, which is, you know, it seems hard to imagine that you could reach a point like that, but I think there’s a, there’s a, there’s a geometry to it that you could reach that. And I think there’s, you know, there’s a business case for it.

Mitch Luker: Well, and when you talk about the dollars and cents of it, another thing like when I talk with my leadership about is so we have seen an increase of 10% in our persistence with our students. And so in most health programs, especially within nursing, you can’t just take a student and be like, oh, we have an empty seat in third semester. We’ll just plop a student in there because everything builds on top of it. So whenever a student is unsuccessful in first, second semester, that means I have an empty seat now in two other semesters or three, possibly if it’s in first. That rear end that’s not in a seat in that classroom is costing us money. And so if you’re increasing the number of students who are successful, so if you’re a nursing program and when we know that nationally 54% of nursing students graduate on time, that means 46% don’t. That’s a lot of empty seats. And so if you can take the cost of how much does a student pay per credit, per class, and then you do that math, And you multiply that by the number of students you’re not having in a seat. And so if you have even 10 students in a seat, and if your tuition, just picking a nice round number here is, you know, 200 bucks, and that is a three credit class, that’s $600 times 10, that’s $6,000 in a classroom that you’re missing out on. And that’s only in one class. And then when you multiply that by, say, three or four classes, that’s a lot of money. And so, you know, when you’re talking about trying to make that business case of it, don’t forget about that. We know that virtual reality helps students learn better and learn faster and retain. Plus, not only that, they can then take that knowledge they’re learning and apply it. which that’s the biggest crucial part, is students are great at memorizing, but in nursing, we don’t educate students to memorize. We educate them to apply the knowledge and use it. And so, when you can educate them in that way, in virtual reality, they’re going to be more successful on their exams. They’re going to do better, and you’re going to get, again, more rear ends and seats, more people in clinical. And therefore, you’re going to be gaining or you’re not going to be losing money. So that’s money that your school is already having to supplement out and pay out. So there’s another way that you can look at the savings that virtual reality can give you.

Jon Brouchoud: Absolutely. And another sort of way to think about this too, is that if we’re thinking about this in terms of a business, you know, there’s a, there’s a tremendous demand in the way of shortages that we’ve talked about quite a bit on this, on this podcast, but, um, there’s, there’s massive devastating shortages that are already here. They’re getting worse. And, uh, used to be, we do demos and we’d always ask everybody, cause we talked to people all over the country and some of them would be like, no, it’s not too bad. And we’re okay. But now, uh, every single time. It’s like, yes, there’s a devastating, it’s getting worse and we need solutions. So now you look at your VR lab that’s sitting empty all summer. And you think about the fact that that is a, you know, a way to hyper accelerate the learning curve and to get people experience clinic, real clinical experience, hands on clinical experience that’s preparing them for the real world. And you’re talking about, we’re going to have thousands of nurses short in Wisconsin alone. Every state in America has that issue. All over the world, there’s that issue. So now you’ve got these labs that have this capability, and they’re just sitting empty. So I think we need to figure out a way to harness those labs during those off hours, during that downtime, to be able to start accelerating that program. If we’re going to solve this problem, this is like an all hands on deck situation, and we’re going to need all the resources we can get. And this is a resource that I think could make a big difference.

Bill Ballo: Yeah, absolutely. I also have people that I say they’re on sort of the stepping stones, right? So I have some faculty who are new to VR, and they’re sort of just getting into it. And then I have some that I consider to be very advanced. And so they’re starting to think about things like you’re mentioning, Jon, right? Oh, well, we should be using this, we should be doing this, we should be expanding here, we should be expanding there. And then I also have people who are very, very, you know, basic, or what I consider to be basic, sort of just entry level. So, you know, when people look at virtual reality, sometimes there’s a lot of fear surrounding it, not just the money fear, the money fear is huge. But then there’s the fear surrounding it, like, well, I’m sort of new to this and so that can sort of limit and then you add that in with the money fear and you really limit yourself from doing these things that are extremely innovative and could potentially as you start to go up those steps and go up that ladder could potentially wind up being a big earner for you. in the future. I think it’s always that idea of how can we look three years ahead or two years ahead or something like that. That’s a tough way to do it when you’re just starting out and you’re looking at this initial cost and you’re looking at how much everything, how much you’re gonna have to run and how much time and effort you’re gonna have to put into it. But then seeing that payoff in the end there, Yeah, I think I can definitely save you, you know.

Mitch Luker: I’ve been thinking about one thing this summer, during summertime, during this, I’ve been thinking about like, I would love to actually write a new class. So, and call it like a transition class, so like our students who are going from first to second semester. and have them come in for maybe, you know, just even, you know, one day a week for like two or three weeks, and just put them through several different scenarios to kind of help get that mind shift change from first semester to second semester. And then for students who are going from second to third, and from third to fourth. You know, and like, okay, let’s think about like, now that you’re going into this next thing, like let’s do a mental health scenario as you’re getting ready to go do mental health class and mental health clinical, and let’s do some more advanced med surge scenarios. So that way we’re getting your mind where it needs to be as you go forward. And so using that as a way to prep students and get them, you know, pre-thinking about things because otherwise they come in and it’s like, Oh, my gosh, now I got to think in this much deeper way about this thing. And I got to get more so level of biology and anatomy and all these things. Because I mean, when you’re thinking about that transition and how you think you don’t want to be doing it while you’re trying to learn the knowledge. So let’s, you know, let’s get you some of those concepts in your brain and how you’re thinking already. So that way, then, as you’re going forward, you’re just that much more prepared for the next semester coming to you.

Jon Brouchoud: That’s a great idea. And you know, like you demonstrated with Ricky last week, you know, you could re you could even create like learning modules that are pretty 3d recorded prepared ahead of time. So all you have to do is have the VR headset set up and have students just roll up and go through those simulations asynchronously. It doesn’t have to be with facilitated. Real, real easy, you know, give them an extra, uh, you know, preparation for fall semester. It’s a great idea. What about sending headsets home with instructors to get them familiar during the summer months? or either of you doing that or have tried that. I mean, it’s an opportunity, you know, it’s like getting them to come to campus sometimes is going to be a little bit of a stretch, you know, depending on their situation or their contract or whatever the situation is. But, you know, some of the instructors, they have this downtime. If they get to take VR home, you know, there’s a coolness factor to it, right? They’re going to set that up and they’re going to want to play with it. Um, what about that? What about getting them on board? So then fall semester comes around, they’re ready to rock.

Bill Ballo: So I’m lucky in the sense that we have our current fleet of MetaQuest 2 is 28. And I had the instructor from, what does he teach? He teaches carpentry, sorry, carpentry. Jon, we’ve met with him. Oh, Patrick? Yeah, about creating some stuff sort of outside of Acadicus, but I mean, we started off as like, what can we create inside Acadicus? And then we started looking at like, what could be potentially available? Well, he came up with just like, you know, or actually it’s Eric Donovan. So he came up with like, well, what if I were able to take some of my 3D renderings and pull them into the MetaQuest headset? And could I do that and all that? And so he came to me and said, can I borrow one? And I was like, yeah, absolutely. So I am in a lucky spot there where I can send a MetaQuest home with them. I do have instructors who have come. Chuck Benton originally came and asked, could he take a laptop and a headset home? And we were able to allow him to do that and get some time in working with Acadicus. So we do some of it. I’d love to do a little more, but we definitely do some of it.

Mitch Luker: I have three faculty right now with a laptop. And because we have, we updated to our MetaQuest 3s. So they take the MetaQuest 2s home because they were still functioning headsets. They were great. They’re just not as light for our students. So we swapped over to a lighter headset that was easier to work with. Um, and so, yeah, I have 3 faculty right now that. Are they have them at home and because I want that because now is we’re starting to really grow our program. And having some backup people who can help run and facilitate scenarios. So that way I can do work more work on my creation and building. Making things for other programs and stuff so. We, we’re, we’re working on that. even though when the headsets are home with them, make sure that you have a really good discussion with them on the front end about how to get everything working. Um, cause we always have to meet in teams first and then that helps them to, uh, like, I’m like, okay, turn on, okay, turn do this because I was like, okay, I gotta make better user guides. Um, For for this for our student for our faculty, because the ones I have, I kind of take for granted what I know. And so I’ve got a. Like, the troubleshooting stuff, they kind of get it like, oh, wait, my pairing is lost or this happened. And so that’s kind of the biggest challenge, I think, is helping them learn how to troubleshoot when something isn’t quite perfect. Uh, so learning, getting them to that point is the biggest challenge, but because otherwise when they get in, they can pick up Acadicus. Um, my dental team, they came in, so they’ve never, ever done a simulation at all period. And, um, we, I had them come in and start playing with our dental scenario. And I just went ahead and threw Sheila onto, uh, the, I’m like, you run it for Lynn. And I was like, here’s what you do. Click, click, click, click. And I showed her really quick. And she was actually running the scenario with the other faculty within about 15 minutes.

Jon Brouchoud: That’s amazing.

Bill Ballo: Yeah, running the scenario is definitely not hard. If you know how to run some simulation, it’s definitely not hard. I totally agree with that. Yeah.

Jon Brouchoud: Well, and the extra, the icing on the cake with that is if you can get the instructors to take the headsets home, get them through the learning curve, which isn’t that steep, but it’s there for sure. There’s things you’re going to have to learn. You’re going to have to be a little patient to learn a new thing. But once you’ve got that skill, you’re opening a door where, especially for larger campuses that serve a really big geographic region, you’ve got instructors that are coming from an hour, two hours away. There’s a world where they could stay at home. and run a simulation through VR. And the students are on campus. You’re just putting them on headsets. But once you’re in that virtual world, it doesn’t matter where you are. We’ve seen simulations done with people facilitating from 8,000 miles away. You don’t have to be in the same room together. So if those instructors are going home and they’re getting versed on that, that’s a great opportunity for them to eventually be able to teach remotely for schools where that makes sense.

Mitch Luker: And they don’t even need a headset to do that. I mean, literally, they can just have a, because I never run a scenario in a headset. I always do it in screen-based mode because it’s so much easier to see what my students are doing on the screens I have on the wall versus if I’m in a headset, I have a very limited field of view within the scenario. And so, I mean, they literally can, they don’t even need that, send the headset home. You could send them home with just a laptop that could run it and they could actually be practicing that way.

Jon Brouchoud: That’s a really good point. And something that I forgot. Yeah, that’s that’s a great point, because a lot of times instructors think they have to learn this whole new VR thing and it’s going to make them you know, they just worry about everything. But you’re right. If you know how to run simulation, you know how to use Acadicus already, because it’s just literally a rectangle with options you choose. You know, you’re clicking. There’s nothing nothing else to it. It’s super simple once you’re there. That’s a really good point and something that I think it’s important for us to reiterate that with new schools and organizations that think about, oh, my whole faculty has to learn how to use VR now. No, they don’t. Not a single one of them ever has to put on a headset if you don’t want. I think it’s important for them to put on the headset so they can see what the students are going to experience and how immersive it is and how much different it is than looking at it on a screen because it’s like a totally different animal. But once you’ve had that experience and you kind of get it, you’re facilitating from a desktop or a screen and you don’t have to be in the headset. That’s a lot easier.

Mitch Luker: Yeah. The only reason my faculty have a headset at home is because I like for them to go through the scenario with me facilitating the first time. So that way they can kind of see how it’s done. And then I have them take off their headset and then they facilitate with me being their student. And so that’s the only reason why they have a headset and that’s where the issue comes. But when they’re running it, I mean, it’s not hard. It’s really easy.

Bill Ballo: Yeah, the only time I’m ever in headset during a simulation is if I’m playing a part. So like if I’m playing, aside from being patient, being the patient, I’m always going to be in viewer mode. But if I have to be the dad, right, and I’m, then I’m in VR. Or if I have to make things appear and disappear, Then I’ll be in VR. And that only comes up like in our Carl Shapiro simulation. They don’t want the 12 lead to be out there until they order the 12 lead. So once they order the 12 lead, then I just make it visible. And it’s that simple. I have the 12 lead there. It’s already built into the simulation, but then I just hit it and make it visible. And that’s it. That’s the only time that I will ever be in VR when I’m doing a simulation. The way that I’m starting with my instructors is like, don’t even think VR. Yes, you need to go in and experience it because there’s a few things that’ll do. First of all, it gives them the idea like, oh, that’s what this is. Cause they don’t understand. Well, some of them get it, but most of them don’t understand until they actually go in it. And then they’re like, oh, that’s what we’re doing here. And then the other thing that it does is it quells the fear of I’m going to get sick. Because that comes up more than anything else I have to deal with. I’m gonna get sick, I’m gonna get nauseous, I’m gonna get, no, you’re not. You’re standing in a room, you’re not riding a roller coaster or flying an F-18 or anything like that. So those are the two things that I quell almost immediately by putting people into headset. And I will get the people that’ll go, oh, I can’t do this because I get motion sickness. And I’ll go, I use you here, Jon. I’m like the CEO of this company. has really bad motion sickness, and he doesn’t get motion sickness in this. I’m not saying that you won’t. We’ll bring a chair over if we have to, but I’ve had almost no students have that issue. So those are the two things that I want them to experience is one, oh, that’s what this is, and then two, I didn’t feel sick at all, you know? Because that’s the immediate thought. It’s like, I’m putting this thing in my head, I’m gonna feel sick.

Mitch Luker: And so like Bill said, the times that I have to be in there, which is pretty rare during a scenario, I actually set up one of my laptops and I log into it with my VR mode. So that way then my big screen in my lab is still visible through viewer mode. So that way then students who aren’t in the scenario at the time can still see everything without having to watch the shaky cam, because I don’t always put it in Acadicus. because sometimes it’s nice to be able to see from the student views that way I can help them when they’re struggling with something. But then I just set up on my little podium underneath my monitor, I will set up my laptop with my headset so that if I do need to quick throw it on and do a change or add something or play a part, and then, yeah, and it’s… Cause I just log in with one of our generic admin accounts to do the changes if I need to. And that way I can just do a quick, hold the headset up, grab the control, click, click, put it back down and get back to what I was doing. So there’s kind of ways around that to make it nice and smooth and easy. And, um, and I’m doing those situations like that.

Jon Brouchoud: Yeah, absolutely. That makes a lot of sense too. Well, this has been great, great, great ideas. I’m looking forward to putting together like a highlight summary of the bullet points that we discussed so we can create a nice, easy cheat sheet. So hopefully reach a few instructors before the summer’s over so they can take advantage of that. Is there anything left unsaid that we didn’t cover yet?

Bill Ballo: I don’t know.

Jon Brouchoud: Nothing I can think of. Let’s wrap it up early, in true summer month style. Give ourselves an extra 15 minutes in our day. So we’ll wrap up this episode. But you guys want to just smile quick? We’ll do a little promotional screenshot. Bingo. Got it. It’s Friday at Simulation Pulse Live. Thanks, everybody, for joining. And we’ll see you next Friday at noon central.

Bill Ballo: Bye, everyone.

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