Highlights

Transcript

 

Rick Casteel:
Welcome to Sim Pulse, everyone. We’re fumbling a bit today because we don’t have our fearless leader with us. Jon Brouchoud is out with, he’s got a bit of a cold and his voice isn’t doing great. So we’re giving him the day off, as it were. And so, you know, this is where the patients are running the asylum a little bit. You’re going to have to deal with Mitch Luker, Bill Ballo, Sean Blissett, and myself running things here today. So we’ll try to get everybody through this and give you something interesting to listen to and to watch. So Sean, welcome. And Jamie’s out there too. Hi, Jamie.

Bill Ballo:
Hello, Rick. Hello, everybody. And Sean, I just hit Sean allowed to talk. Jamie, I’ll do the same. And then you can choose if you’d like to talk or not. So welcome, welcome. Looks like Jon is joining, but sort of staying quiet today.

Rick Casteel:
He’s probably thought, I better keep an eye on this group. He’s not sure how much editing he’s going to have to do when this is over, right?

Bill Ballo:
Right. That’s right. That’s right. Welcome, Jamie. Hey, guys. How’s it going?

Jamie Howell:
Going great.

Rick Casteel:
Hey, how are you?

Jamie Howell:
Good. I have Kendra with me, too.

Bill Ballo:
Hey, Kendra. Well, hello to both of you.

Rick Casteel:
Well, today we were going to take a dive into a new offering that we just started providing this year through Acadicus, and that is our campus offering. And I would have to say that the roots of this idea, and Sean, please jump in here, certainly. Probably started back, Bill, when you and Jon and the Acadicus crew did some work for Madison in developing some custom locations for you. One of them being your HQ, right? A digital twin, if you would, of your main campus. And we want to kind of jump in and, Bill, whenever you want, if you want to pull that up and we can kind of look at it.

Bill Ballo:
Yeah, absolutely. I’m going to do that right now. So let me pull this up and I’ll hit share on my screen. And I will just share the application itself. And here we go.

Rick Casteel:
And so while Acadicus certainly has content that’s been developed that can be used at organizations all over the country, we also do a good bit of custom work, like you’re seeing here from Bill for Madison College. And actually, if you went, and I did this, right, if you go to the Madison College website right now, and pull that up, right, you would see a shot, I think, from a different angle, obviously, of this building facade. And so Madison actually had Acadicus build a digital twin of their main headquarters.

Bill Ballo:
Yeah, actually, I’ll see if I can pull up that picture. Because the pictures I took, we can show and compare to the actual creation that we have here in Acadicus. So I’ll grab those. But at the same time, because I don’t want it to be too boring, you know, I’ll run through what we’re looking at here. So this is our main Truax campus. And this is true to form to a point. And we wanted some leverage with the creativity here, right? So what we didn’t want to do was we didn’t want to just make it, hey, it’s Madison College campus. It looks exactly the same. And everything on the inside is exactly the same. And when you go inside, it’s going to be just like if you took a bunch of pictures of it. That really wasn’t what we were looking for. And when you first walk into Madison College, and you walk in through our Truax campus, so obviously you can see we left the roof off, you know, to continue to allow some light in, a little sunlight. For those of you that live in Wisconsin or have visited Wisconsin, we don’t have that all through the year. We have quite a bit of time where there’s not a lot of sunlight, you know, because it’s overcast and kind of bleak looking.

Rick Casteel:
So just like this kind of architecture wouldn’t work well there in January, February, let’s say, Bill.

Bill Ballo:
Yeah, it would get a little snowy there in the middle, and that probably would be a bad thing. You know, I don’t know. I’d kind of like it a little bit because, you know, I sort of like the winters, even though I grew up in Florida. I kind of like it. It’s, you know, still a novelty to me. I’ve been, I’ve only been here for 11 years now, so it’s still a novelty to me. But what’s interesting, there’s an interesting story actually about this waterfall. So when the building was first being built, the designers had kind of gone to the students about what things would you like in here, those kind of things. And they had mentioned a water effect, like a waterfall, fountain, something like that. And so originally, I think there was supposed to be a waterfall. There was originally supposed to be a pretty good-sized waterfall. But I think what they found out was that, you know, it would get water on the floor, and then it would be a lot of upkeep, and then, you know, the walls would probably get a little grimy and stuff like that. And over time, it was kind of like, well, that might not be the best idea. And so what they did was they put these LED lights in, and then there’s a speaker that plays a water effect sound. So you have the LED lights back here and then the speaker that plays the water effect sound, but no water, okay? But we kind of decided, you know what, let’s put that water effect back in. Not only will we put in the waterfall, but we’ll also have just a pond kind of sitting here, you know, sort of as the collection for that waterfall. And then it’s three stories. And when I bring students into this, they like to kind of roam around and go upstairs and stuff like that. And this is where we’re going to pass by the SIM directory thing real quick. What we did was we put some 3D recordings in here of just sort of introducing you to the space. But this is where our main information desk is actually at, at the Truax campus. And then the inside, you can see, you know, there’s grass in here rather than making it like a hard floor like it actually is. And so the other thing that we wanted was we wanted some kind of unique teaching area, sort of the overall idea that Madison College is about teaching. And we went with an amphitheater in the back. So we have this kind of nice teaching amphitheater back here. And what I did with this was our architecture students had a bunch of plans that they had put together for their class. And I took those plans and just laid them out, made them nice and big in the back here so that when they came in, when they came in and did their experience in VR, they would see their own plans. And it surprised them because their instructor gave them to me and didn’t tell them that he was doing that. And he didn’t even really know what exactly I was going to do with it. But I set them up on the walls here as well. And so I had students that were sort of coming in, and they were like, oh, wow, this is neat. Yeah, all right, cool, whatever. And then they looked, and they’re like, oh, wait a minute, that’s my design. And they got to see it in VR. They got to see that 2D design. Now, we also work with the architecture department to bring their 3D designs to life as well so that they can put a headset on and actually go into them. But we do that a little differently. So this was just a way to have everything connected. And I also got pictures of the actual pictures that are at Madison College. And in one of the iterations of this, I put those on the walls in there as well. So you’re kind of feeling like you’re actually at the college. You know, it’s a very iconic structure. But at the same time, we took some liberties with it to make it a little bit more unique and not just sort of the straightforward, here’s Madison College. So I’m going to look for those pictures over here, too. OK. I know I have them. I know I put them in my Google Drive here. It’s just a matter of finding them.

Rick Casteel:
And so I’ve got to think, and again, Jon probably can’t comment right now, but perhaps, Sean, you could, that this could have been the genesis for the idea for the campus offering that we’re providing for our customers, where the campus offering offers you a more generic environment that you’re finding right here, which is very specific, but with the same idea. It’s a launching point or a landing point where several different departments or students can land and then go into various different either labs or experiences or divisions, right? You could have an anatomy lab launch off of there, a nursing lab launch off of there, a respiratory lab, a veterinary lab, all launched from the same campus environment. But, you know, upon request, we can also work with organizations to develop digital twins like we did here with you at Madison to achieve that kind of same outcome.

Bill Ballo:
Yeah, and actually what I’m going to do, because it’s just easier, I’m going to go to Google Maps. Like, why am I not thinking this, right? There’s photos and stuff like that. Yeah, here, actually, I’ve got some photos. I’ll bring those up here in just a second. Yeah, so then what we wanted to, so what we do is to start off a simulation. This is a really great way to start off a simulation, is to have the students come to the Madison College to our structure and essentially come to campus. Now, what’s really great about it is they get to practice sort of moving around too, right? So they get to like, okay, I have to teleport. Oh, yeah, I got to teleport. And then they get to practice like, oh, I got to push the button. So here’s how I’m going to push that button. So I’m going to stop sharing here for just a second. And I’m going to share screen. And I should have had these ready to go earlier. But here is that, here’s that water structure, right, that we talked about.

Rick Casteel:
And there’s the… Immediately familiar to me now.

Bill Ballo:
Yeah. And there’s those LED lights. And this was supposed to be sort of a waterfall. And then there’s the campus itself. And so what I’m going to do is I’ll kind of move out here. Sorry, go ahead, Rick.

Rick Casteel:
No, I’m looking at this going, you know, I feel like I’ve been there because I’ve seen it and been there in VR, right? Right. I mean, that’s the exact facade that’s built that you just showed in Acadicus.

Bill Ballo:
Yeah. And actually what I’m going to do, I’m moving my, I’m moving myself over to approximately where that picture’s taken from. And then I’ll sort of pull this picture in, over top.

Rick Casteel:
So if you’re moving anything on your screen, we’re not seeing it.

Bill Ballo:
No, you’re not seeing anything yet, because I am moving on a screen I’m not sharing at the moment. There we go. All right, so I’m going to stop sharing again here for a second, and I’m going to share this screen. Let me share screen one. Actually, no, I want to share screen two. All right, so there’s what you’re seeing. Now, I’m going to pull that picture in. Let me know if you can see this picture. Oh, maybe I can’t pull the picture in. Guess I can’t do that while I’m, see, Zoom doesn’t let you do that. Okay. All right. Got it set up now. Share, and we’re going to share. All right. So now I’m going to pull this picture in and see if I can kind of sneak it in there.

Rick Casteel:
We’re seeing Acadicus, a view of the…

Bill Ballo:
Yep. There you go. Okay. So I’m resizing that picture just a little bit. So there’s the picture. That’s the picture of the actual campus right there. And I’m going to kind of move that this way a little bit. Oops. I full-screened us. Should have practiced this beforehand. There we go. All right. I’m going to move this out of the way. There we go. All right. So there you go. So there’s the picture. Right. And so now you’re seeing the picture and then you’re seeing sort of the creation that we had made in here. Right. So you can see how those two, I mean, it’s a really iconic structure. The people that have gone into this have gone, oh, yeah, OK. They walk up, they’re like, oh, I’m on campus. They know exactly where they are. And we didn’t overcomplicate it by then saying, OK, now we want to put in all the hallways and we want to put in all of these desks and all of that. We didn’t want to make it look exactly the same. There’s that, this is the second level there. We didn’t wanna make it look exactly the same. We wanted it to be something that people would go, oh yeah, that’s Madison College. There’s our cafe upstairs. Oh yeah, that’s Madison College. We used similar colors as well. So we used sort of the greens and the oranges and the stuff like that, that matched up. with the college itself, there it is during the winter.

Rick Casteel:
Yeah. Great. And then you did go beyond this, right? Because you also have a couple of other areas that you’re able to use that are much more fantastical than kind of your digital twin campus.

Bill Ballo:
So one of the things that I talked about, I think, it could have even been maybe early on in my meetings with Acadicus, was we talked about, I wanted to teach cardiology on the moon. Why? I don’t know. But I just wanted to teach cardiology on the moon.

Rick Casteel:
What’s that?

Bill Ballo:
Because you can.

Rick Casteel:
Because I can. Because I can. I can in virtual reality. And I can’t, you know, obviously I can’t do that for real. I’m not going to the moon anytime soon. But I wanted to be able to teach cardiology on the moon. And so what we did was we created a few different environments. So I wanted to teach cardiology on the moon, but then we also said, okay, there’s going to be other people that may want to teach different things in different places. And so this is not necessarily a moon base. It’s more of a, you know, in-between earth and moon space station, And so you can see similar architecture. So it still gives you that feeling that you’re at Madison College. Obviously, it’s this Madison College Extended Reality Center. And it’s got a lot of our simulations. And I’ll get back to that here in a second. But I actually have a couple of videos of me teaching from sort of the edge here. And the stars that are laid in in the background, I believe, I’m not 100% sure, and I can be corrected on this, but I believe that map actually is, you know, is completely accurate for what you would see.

Rick Casteel:
The Milky Way out there?

Bill Ballo:
Yeah, for what you would see in the Earth night sky. So you can see here’s some of my drawing tools right there. So, but then notice, we’ve also kind of identified where Madison College is in the world.

Rick Casteel:
That’s great. I love it.

Bill Ballo:
Kind of neat. And then if we go back over.

Rick Casteel:
Go ahead, Rick. I said, yeah, you should put an arrow that says you are here.

Bill Ballo:
Right, exactly. Exactly.

Rick Casteel:
So, for those who are wondering, but why do all this, right? You know, we talk week after week, you know, and we’ve heard from Mitch and Jamie and others about how important it is to make somebody feel they’re in a specific location and have this identification of space with objects and actions. Right. And similarly, I think there you’re trying to trigger their creativity, their engagement, their interest, right? We’re fighting this battle now, right? With with, you know, we’re all carry these computers in our pockets and social media and seven by 24, right? We’ve got data kind of being streamed to our faces. So it’s like, how do we capture the attention now of this audience that’s coming out? That’s not easily impressed, right? You put them in a mannequin lab and they’re looking at this hunk of rubber and plastic that kind of looks like a person. And they’re like, oh, yeah, OK. But boy, okay, let’s go do an anatomy class in our space station on the moon. Well, suddenly they’re, what, where, doing, we’re going to go where, what? And so that level of engagement is really necessary, I think, to get them interested and involved and engaged in what you’re presenting. And so these environments are rich and important so that we can grab their attention.

Bill Ballo:
Yeah. And so many times, so much of the technology that we use has a tendency to make us feel a little further apart. It’s interesting because we think of things like social media and stuff like that. It’s supposed to make us feel a little closer together. But actually what it sort of does is it makes us feel a little further apart because it’s not as personal. It’s not we’re not as connected to something because you can be connected to, you know, a million things when it comes to social media, but what this does is it still connects everything that we’re doing in virtual reality. It makes it feel less cold and it brings it back to the idea that you are still here at Madison College. You’re still working at Madison College. You’re still a member and you’re part of the Madison College team. And so that I think is a really big thing that gets overlooked with some technology. That personalization really sometimes does get overlooked. And what we wanted was we wanted an area where essentially people could go. I just went through the portal. But essentially where people could go and they could go, what kind of things can we do in VR? Well, I have demos coming up for people at the college who want to start using virtual reality. And so if the fire safety people come to me and say, we’d like to use virtual reality, we just don’t know what we should do. Oh, OK, well, let’s load fire safety. And instead of having to do it the cold way, it’s not actually that cold, but to go in there and go, OK, let’s go into our menu, and let’s go into our simulations, and let’s choose a simulation, and that kind of stuff. Instead of doing that, I have a nice visual graphic representation here, and then I can just hit it and go in. So I can essentially go to any of these. And I’m going to go to the agricultural first. So we’ll go to that. So the other thing that we wanted was we wanted areas that people could go and visit and either just spend a little time in. And here I’m going to actually stop sharing just for a second, because I don’t think I shared my audio. And I want to do that. Share sound and we’ll share again. I was having some weird computer stuff today. It wasn’t Acadicus-related. It was, I don’t know. Something with my computer today, not wanting to load certain things. So anyway, we wanted all these different areas that either you could go and visit and just kind of relax in. We even talked about having some pods outside of our extended reality center that we could have our students sort of log into. Yeah, again, not loading for me. And I think this is a computer thing. So let me stop sharing while I fix that problem.

Rick Casteel:
OK. No worries. I’m curious, Mitch or Jamie, any, have you experienced or experimented any with, with leveraging Acadicus in a manner that, you know, you use unusual environments or custom made environments or things that would associate the student with being at the school?

Jamie Howell:
So I’ve been using, um, The thing I’ve been working on and setting up is the non-facilitated learning experiences that you can do in Acadicus, which we kind of learned about a little bit from our friends a couple of weeks ago. And I’ve been using the outdoor trail area to build some of those so that trying to give students that, uh, like it’s not, Oh, I’m in a classroom and I’m learning or I’m in the simulation hall learning or whatever. I’m outside and I’m hearing other sounds and just getting those different experiences. And so, um, like I built one for nursing process now where the students go through and they learn about the, care planning and assessment and the legal issues and ramifications with nursing and different pieces of that. And I had a couple of students come in and test and play around with some stuff for me just to kind of make sure that I was on the right track. And they told me that they actually liked it better than if they were in the classroom space because they liked the fact that it helped relieve pressure. Because when I had stuff set up in the classroom space in Acadicus, they said they still felt the classroom pressure, but being out of that in an unusual space that it kind of made them kind of forget that they were learning and that they were. And they were able just to sit back and enjoy the moment and not have to think about it as much. So that’s been my latest revelation was using unusual spaces for things it gets students out of, it’s kind of like the difference of Acadicus versus being in the mannequin based sim lab, where students will tell me in the mannequin based sim lab that they feel me, you know, my, my eyes burning a hole through their soul, but in, they don’t feel that in the VR world. And, um, so having that different environment, it just changes how they’re receiving the information. and how they’re processing and thinking about it. And it takes away some of that pressure and makes them feel more at ease.

Rick Casteel:
Yep. I like that. And you know, there’s lots of, obviously there’s so many uses we have for VR. One of the things I like to do is, is use the meditation apps that are available in my Quest headset, right? So periodically I’ll go and put that on and go into a meditation app. for 15 or 20 minutes just to decompress and relax and kind of recenter. And, you know, it’s the same kind of where the mind goes, the body follows, right? So, you know, the impact that this can have on us visually and auditorially can really change how we feel physically and kind of what we associate with physically. And so, you know, a lot of that, the dynamics that are happening here are associated with these locations we can put people in. So Bill, let me turn it back over. Oh, here we go. One of my favorite spots.

Bill Ballo:
I went to the beach scene. Again, being from Florida, this is not necessarily a Florida beach. Florida beaches are very flat. And this is kind of rocky. And then it’s got hills. And our students have found the top of the mountain over here. And that was actually kind of fun. And then we actually, Carly and I, my supervisor, we actually used this one time to just meet, to just kind of meet and talk. And we hung out here at the beach scene and we just talked about some of the stuff that was coming up. You know, it’s just another way to sort of help with some creativity, help give you some ideas. And then, you know, like Mitch said, you’re getting out of that, I’m in the sim lab feel, and going to like, you know, I mean, essentially, I could put a dynamic cardiology simulation right here, right? So I could grab that dynamic cardiology mannequin, put it right here, and we could be doing dynamic cardiology on a pier in what looks like more of a South Pacific kind of place, right? So we can just do that, right? We don’t have to always have everything be within the sort of confined environment of an emergency room or a nursing floor or whatever it may be. And so that was kind of where we went. We went with just a bunch of different style classrooms. I’m thinking my templates. I do have.

Jamie Howell:
So Bill, I’m glad you brought up the beach scene because I’m using that right now to make a So we’ve had a lot of students who’ve come in and done VR, but then they might go like over summer and they’ve had three months where they haven’t touched it. So I’m making, I made a small mini tutorial, like the one that Rick built, and I built it there on the beach scene. And so students come in and they get a refresher on the action button, the grab, moving things around, doing an assessment. But I put it on that beach scene because I’m like, let’s make it a little more relaxed before they come in.

Rick Casteel:
Yeah, absolutely.

Bill Ballo:
And this is one of my favorites. Yeah, this is the forest environment. The students really enjoy going down by the creek here. I get a lot of them that are like, oh man, I’m going to go swim in the water. And it just gives you that feel of being there.

Rick Casteel:
I want to take a fishing pole. This is a great introduction to, and Sean, I hope you’re geared up now to talk about our new campus offering that we have. that after you buy more than three, four, or five different labs, when you scale up to that point, it becomes a bit of a juggling act to try to kind of help your classes get where they need to be. So the centralized area where you can launch into these different experiences of these different labs becomes almost essential. And so we now have an offering. where you get the campus along with six labs, all for, you know, and Acadicus has always been one flat fee, right? We don’t charge per head or per the size of your organization or the experiences, right? You get everything in our platform for one subscription fee annually. And at this scale where you’re at six labs, you also get this new campus environment. which we help design and we use your logos and your colors and your banners to quickly and readily identify kind of where a student is. Just like you’ve been talking about, Bill, all the time. You know, hey, you go there, you immediately feel like you’re at Madison College. Well, we want your students to feel like when they get into our campus, that they immediately identify with where they are and what they’re supposed to do. So Sean, do you want to start here and kind of give us a tour of our new campus?

Sean Blissett:
Sure, Rick, thanks. Absolutely. Go ahead and share my screen here. Oh, can you give me share capabilities? Just noticed I don’t have them. But yeah, so like you mentioned, the campus subscription offering It’s meant for the larger schools that have multiple labs. If you’re going to get three, four, five labs, the campus offers six labs and it can always be increased.

Bill Ballo:
Sorry about that, Sean. I elevated you to panelist, so it kind of switched you real quick there.

Sean Blissett:
Gotcha. Yeah, so I was just saying that the campus offering includes six labs and a campus hub to which you can go to and enter those different six labs that have different experiences that you can change out and to be used for all sorts of different things. Like you guys mentioned, already in the video, where it’s a space where you can use for pre-briefing, post debriefing, you can add videos, images, and whatnot, kind of make it your own space, or here we go, I should be sharing, or you can get custom development for a digital twin like we’ve seen or it could be really anything. It doesn’t have to be a digital twin necessarily. It could be in space or any of the other examples that we’ve seen. But what you get with this subscription in the six labs is this campus hub. So it will look like this and it is branded. So we work with you to get your branded colors and logo. logos and we can update the scene and it’s just a kind of a circular space here pan around you can see a lot of the colors in here can be changed based on you know the branding for your institution but let me go into the main hub space up here so right in the middle here to the left is a board which lists out all the labs that come with the campus subscription and so that they can individually be entered in from the main launcher menu without having to go through the hub if access is quicker or easier for whatever instance that the instructor is using it for. And we added a button here for the tutorial to get students trained up on how to use Acadicus and VR. Yeah, so this board is just kind of informational and kind of get people set up. And then, of course, you can always add your own videos and images here. I have an example of a video back here in our little auditorium area. It’s just our welcome video that we have on our website. It’s just an example of what one of the videos looks like, and they can just be placed anywhere in the scene. And over here, we have the six labs that I’ve set up with six of our experiences, our simulations that are meant to be solo and they have an assessment attached with them. So I’ll just give an example of what a student may do. So they would enter here and find the experience or simulation that they’re looking for and just click on the button to enter it. And it will bring them to that specific lab, one of the six labs. and then each one of these labs can be set with whichever simulation the facilitator and instructor may wish to have there. This one is the ECG placement and you can see the simulations right here in the lab loaded up. The student can go through the experience and in this particular one you’re adding stickers in the nodes onto the patient and it just gives you a assessment up here telling me basically saying that I put that in the wrong spot and then the student can then go through this experience you know as much as they want and then with the campus you get a way to get back to your hub and it’s through the the lab menu here We have our own little comments area, which is for Acadicus, but when you get the campus subscription, this button will appear. And when you go to your private campus, it will bring the person back to the campus branded hub. So then imagine students are tasked with doing one up to six of those experiences that are on the wall here and they can just kind of loop through each one by coming to the hub going into the experience and then coming back just the way. I just showed you right there. And then I’m going to mention this, but each one of these labs can be set up with different experiences or simulations. So it’s really up to the facilitator or instructor to choose which ones they’re loaded with. And then these little circles right here are just images. So they could just be updated and changed based on whichever simulation is loaded. And this is just a template, kind of a base, a basic setup of the campus, just mainly meant for giving you access to your six simulations and some information via the videos and tutorial. And of course, we can help The institution filled us out with some other things, like we’ve already seen in this meeting, where we can add in other videos and experiences throughout this whole space, and including changing the entire space through custom development.

Rick Casteel:
Well, and we can use all the tools that an organization might use to customize any of their scenes in this particular scene also. So just like you’re saying, Sean, if they want to bring in documents, slideshows, videos, if they want to do recordings, right, or post a welcome from the dean or an instructor, right, that would be easily popped in here to be available. You know, I have this idea now, you know, after seeing yours, Bill, about, hey, let’s put an info desk in here, right, an info desk that can be updated with information that might be handy to the students. I get very excited about this because I foresee a point where we’ll have folks just putting on a headset to go to school. And so there will be this kind of digital classroom equivalent where we land in a space that’s kind of this public gathering area, just like you do in a commons or in the main foyer of a building like Madison. And then you go off to your various classes or experiences or instructors, right? And that’s exactly what we’re providing for our customers here. So this is really exciting to me. I’m really jazzed about it.

Sean Blissett:
Yeah, it’s really good. Yeah, does anybody have, I guess, questions about that or comments? I think I’m going to stop sharing for now, but I can start sharing again if needed.

Rick Casteel:
Well, just to reinforce what you were saying there, kind of if we called it the Acadicus campus, you know, that was the Acadicus logo and the Acadicus colors. All of that stuff is easily updated with your particular organization’s icons and logos and mascots and however you want to design it, right? You kind of have carte blanche in that space. To Sean’s point, and as Bill alluded to earlier, the limitation becomes if you want a specific architecture, right, if you want the digital twin, we’re more than willing to talk to you and work with you on that kind of effort also, but that this comes along with your subscription at the campus level. So, everybody who gets a campus gets This entry point. And again, all the tools that you have to edit and customize what you want your students to experience when they drop into your space.

Bill Ballo:
You know, when Jon first showed me this. I think he and I were working on another working on our mass casualty. And he said, you know, let’s go into the campus. I just want to show you this real quick. And I’m like, yeah, okay, that’s awesome. And so we went in to the way, because our campus is set up, we did the digital twin. So ours is set up digital twin style. But, you know, he said, this is what comes along with the campus subscription. You know, along with all the other stuff, like the stuff that we’ve built in there, that’s available to everyone. That’s not just our stuff. We did the custom development, but it can be used by anyone. We have all kinds of stuff that we’re still working on for custom development that’s coming up. But he’s like, you know, like Jon does, right? So he’s like, here, watch this. And he just changed the colors like that. Like, it went from yellow to blue to red. And he’s like, oh, you can change these colors any which way you want. And then, you know, you can put different branding in. And it was so easy. And he just brought a branding in. And I was just like, Wow, this is really simple and straightforward. And what I love, too, about that is that those solo experiences, the one through six that you had there, what’s really important about those is that those are the solo experiences. Those are the experiences for students to go into and do things on their own, the ECG. There’s plenty of those. We use it more as a, as a sim lab. We use it more as I’m directing, I am the patient, you know, that kind of stuff. And we use the solo stuff a little bit less. But that’s what’s kind of nice about it is like, there might be people who want to use those solo experiences a little bit more. And then there’s people who want to use it more as a sim lab. And then there’s people who want to use it more as like a lecture hall, like Mitch was talking about earlier. You know, there’s you get to kind of make it your own and use it the way that’s going to work best for you rather than, oh, well, this is what I bought. Now we got to figure out. Yeah, there it is. There it is.

Sean Blissett:
Yeah. So I can show the, yeah, this is available to instructors and facilitators, but not students. As you saw earlier, I was locked out because I was logged in as an anonymous user, but now I’m in, um, As a registered user. So yeah, you can come in here and change the colors. There’s various different parts of the scene that can be changed. So we can make this like a teal-ish color and then it will change the border line here or the neon or the lights, I guess you could say. in the area and so all these are all the different options within this scene that have for branding specifically. So when we set up a new campus for a customer we’ll work with them to find out what colors and logos and such branding elements there are and come in here and then update them to make this look and feel like they’re at least branded to their institution.

Rick Casteel:
And we’re very aware that the marketing departments for these organizations are very particular about logos and colors and sizes that we’re able to help. We just set one up for an organization and we got their marketing folder that had all the very specific hex colors they wanted to use and the logos they wanted to use. And we were able to put them all out here. So it was very, very specific to them.

Bill Ballo:
It reminds me so much of the LED lights that I have in, like, the music room is right here, so, like, there’s LED lights in there, and then I have LED lights out in my, you know, my main, like, football-watching room so that I can change it to different colors. And, you know, I do it on my phone, so I just pick my phone up and I change the color, and it’s the same general idea. You know, it’s just really neat to be able to just do that and go, yeah, yeah, check this out here, let’s change this color, it’s really cool.

Jamie Howell:
Well, and one thing that would be important with this, too, is so because not only can we teach our students, but as community colleges, we have a lot of community partners. So like hospitals or other industries that may be coming in and want to use our VR labs, you know, to do education with their employees and their staff. And so being able to have them land in a space that reminds their people that, hey, you’re at this campus. You’re not at your workplace’s stuff. You’re in ours. And so you’re getting that branding in when you’re having other organizations come in and see your stuff. And so, because it’s important for people to remember, like where they’re at and who’s developed this and who’s got this, you know, a lab available for them. So, you know, keeping that in people’s minds is another big piece of that is you’re looking at using this for not only students, but for community partners.

Rick Casteel:
Excellent point, Mitch. Exactly. Yeah.

Bill Ballo:
And if you have a community partner that’s like paying to come in and do say simulations and stuff with you, you know, you can see how quick and easy it was to even, you can even change it to their colors and, you know, give it a little bit more of a feel of, you know, they’re coming to their area or, you know, like Mitch said, you can keep it your colors and, you know, keep the idea that you are coming to our college or you are coming to our organization versus, uh, we’re just sticking in this thing that we bought, you know?

Rick Casteel:
Well, Sean, you just took me back to when I was taking my night classes now.

Sean Blissett:
Yeah.

Bill Ballo:
Yeah. Yeah. I, I like dark mode and everything better. I’m just, that’s me. I just like the dark mode for everything.

Rick Casteel:
Okay.

Bill Ballo:
And it’s just easily customizable. It’s just so easy to go in and, and just, you know, this is the color I want, this is the change I want, you know, and you can just, you can just do that, you know. Somebody asked me the other day, you know, how long does it take to make changes and stuff like that within within Acadicus and I’m like, well, it depends on what kind of change we’re talking about. Like if you’re talking about creating an entire scene for you, you know, you hand me a scenario. I look at that scenario. I go, yeah, I can do this scenario because I know in my head, I’m going to use Millie. For this and then we’re going to what environment they want. They want her sitting on a park bench. Okay, so I got to get Millie. I got to put her on a park bench. Right. So there’s a little bit more to that. But when but but if someone says, you know, like, hey, you know, I And actually, I think one of the best examples is we had students come in and they were working with the birthing mannequin. And they noticed something that I didn’t notice, that the clock that they were using for timing everything was back here. it was back behind them. They were talking to the patient who was here, like I’m talking to Rick right now, right? The patient was here, but the clock was back there. So they had to constantly turn around to look at the clock. And they’re like, the clock should be right above the patient. So you’re not drawing your focus away from the patient. And I went, oh, okay, hold on. So I put my headset on, I went and I grabbed the clock, I stuck it on the wall in the other spot. And then I just hit save. And they went, oh, yeah, perfect. That’s what we’re looking for. And that was it. Small changes take me no time whatsoever. This kind of thing, small changes, takes me no time whatsoever. Building something a little bit more complicated, like you give me a scenario and you want me to make that scenario for you, yeah, it might take me a day or something like that. It might take me a little bit more time. But honestly, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t take that long because I don’t have to go to developers and go, hey, So I know this is kind of baked in, but I want this changed or I want that changed. And they’re like, okay, yeah, we’ll do that. Plus it’ll cost you, you know, X number of thousands of dollars, you know? Yep. It also spreads out the limitations too, because if I’m buying something where I’m only limited to like an intubation scenario, well, intubation where? Like, well, I’m sorry, we’ve got an OR that you can intubate in. Well, none of my students, well, my students intubate in the OR for practice, but they don’t intubate in the OR in real life. So can we move that out? Yeah, sure. It’s going to take us four months to do that and, you know, X number of dollars, so.

Rick Casteel:
Yep. And another important aspect to this, I think, is also that students’ first impression. Right when they first put a headset on, you know, if somebody puts a headset on and doesn’t have a good first experience, it’s really hard to overcome that. You know, so being able to kind of get them in a space where they feel comfortable, they feel safe, there’s some things immediately familiar, is really helpful. And it helps guide them into where they go and what they do next. And so that first impression means everything.

Bill Ballo:
Yeah, and for my faculty to the people that adopt this and help use it, you know, because sometimes they can be even a little bit more fickle. And, you know, so you gotta, you really got to make sure that The first time they go in they have a really great experience and and and that’s just one of the things that you know Has made my made my job a lot easier Is that they come in they really do have a great experience. They take the headset off. They’re like that was amazing You’re like yeah, isn’t it great? You know and and some of them come in like really stone-faced like I don’t want to do this I don’t like this kind of stuff. I’m not a gamer I’m not a gamer either, but now I’m not a gamer. I’m not into this kind of stuff. And then they go and they put it on. They’re like, Oh, okay. Yeah. Now I get, no, this is not gaming. I get it. So, yep. That first experience makes all the difference.

Jamie Howell:
Well, and one thing that we haven’t talked about, but I think is equally as important is the fact that not only can you change the environment, but you can also change the start point for someone. Cause I have found that that has been really important of where, when you put on the headset and you load the scenario where you appear is sometimes. almost more important at times. So like I took the hazard ID one and because students do it as their very first experience and I don’t want them to have to worry about teleporting into the room because we don’t even do the tutorial before that one. They come in, they put on the headset and now I have it where I move my spawn point to the, in the center of the room so they can just start working and doing things there and not have to get in the room. And even in the campus, being able to set that spawn point of here’s where, whenever you go into our campus space, you’re appearing right in front of here’s the menu with the labs and the number. Yeah. You may want to move over there in a minute, but like you can change that part of the scenarios, which is really important when you’re trying to get people to focus on something because otherwise they can go in and they’re like, Oh, look over here and swirl over here. And then, um, and you’re trying to refocus everyone back. So another important piece and a nice function in Acadicus is that piece of, you know, change that spawn point.

Bill Ballo:
Mitch, I like what you said with the old squirrel over there. Have you had people like in that ICU, PCU, have you had a bunch of them go over the windows and try to figure out what city they’re in? Oh, I get that so much now where I’ll bring people in and I’m like, Hey, there’s a patient over here and they’re over at the windows going, okay, now what city is this? It looks Midwestern. I’m not sure. And I’m just like, um, patient. There’s a patient. Yeah. I love it.

Jamie Howell:
And so when you can set them up to be facing a different direction or a different spot, and then while the other stuff is really cool, but at the same time, I’m also trying to make sure that I set them up for success by not setting them up like out in a hallway where they have to traverse five things to get into the space, because, you know, the goal is something very different than that. So having those options or being able to set that option for a scenario, because maybe I want them to start in the med room. Maybe I want that scenario to be something where they’re going to start off in the space where I set up all the meds and everything else. So, you know, having those as choices, that to me is another important piece of, because you’re, as you were talking about the setting up and stuff, being able to change that thing. Cause if you were going to be having like in the campus, you could set that spawn point to be. there or maybe you want it to be that the spawn point is right in front of that wall of six things because you want so you want to be easy access to go into those things first and or you want to be right in front of the video because you know you have a really cool video that explains something going on with that so being able to change that and it’s a quick click I mean you go in you go under the scenario and you just hit change set point And then you’re done. Yep. Like it’s lightning fast to change it.

Rick Casteel:
Yep. Yep. Well, this is good. We’re already run out of an hour. Yeah. Unbelievable. That’s wild. It’s amazing. So I want to really thank everybody and Bill for certainly the tour of your digital spaces, Sean, for showing the The new campus, really excited about that. And I want to thank everybody who tuned in and watched today. Appreciate it, Jamie. Thanks for joining us. And Jon, you’re there. Yeah, I feel better soon. He’s probably rubbing his head going, oh, I’ve got to edit this so much. I’ll never get sick on these guys again. Or he’s like,

Bill Ballo:
I’m in luck. Rick did a great job. I’ll just mute Bill the rest of the time. It’s cool.

Rick Casteel:
Well, thanks, everybody, for joining us. Have a great weekend. And we’ll see you again next week here on Sim Pulse. Take care.

All:
Take care.