Getting Started with VR at Your University with Melinda Cuilty

Luis Malbas  
All right, hello everybody. Welcome to the second session of our day two at the Immersive Learning Conference. Let me take a look here. It looks like we have some people coming into the room. Drop in here. I see Selena is here. Hi, Selena. Matt. Hey, Matt. Nicole, at wall, nice to see you again. Nicole. Laura Doherty is back. Hey, Rory back. Abby, once again in the house. Excellent. All right, I'm sure we'll have more people popping in as time goes on, and if you can, please go ahead and just type in chat, say your hellos where you're logging in from. That also helps me with making sure that the chat interface is working good. So yeah, nice to see everyone. All right, so I'm going to go ahead and get started, introduce everybody to our next speaker, Melinda quilty, is going to be talking about getting started with VR at your university? Melinda is the enterprise Instructional Technology administrator and VR lead at New Mexico State University, and with a background in teaching and instructional design, she supports faculty with Canvas zoom and course development. Melinda also leads efforts to integrate virtual reality into academic courses, and recently completed her master's in education and learning technology. She brings over a decade of experience in synchronous, asynchronous and hybrid teaching environments. Everybody. Welcome Melinda to tldc and Melinda, I'm gonna go ahead and hide myself from the screen and let you take over

Melinda Cuilty  
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for that great introduction. I want to give you guys a little bit of background about myself and kind of how I came up out about this NMSU, we're located in Las Cruces, New Mexico. You guys have probably not really thought too much of New Mexico unless you're kind of from the area, but we're doing some really great things in VR I started off as a K 12 teacher. I taught middle school, first in a brick and mortar, then I moved to New State. My school was kind enough to kind of start an online component for me back in 2017 so before everybody was doing it, especially at the K 12 Level. And I loved it, and I love getting to use new technology and kind of come up with some different ways to do things. And I didn't think I would at first, I was like, man, put all this in a box instead of in the classroom. I don't know about that. But then I saw how students can be connected and didn't have to be in the same location. And that was such a different mindset. So at one point, I decided to go back to school and get my masters. And MSU actually live in El Paso. So NMSU is a short little drive. They had a great our Global Campus has a great online master's program, especially for education. See someone lived in Las Cruces so they know, like the important question is red or green? That's a big thing around here about what color chili that you like. So it's a great kind of smaller school that you really get to know the students. In fact, clean. I enjoyed it so much. I got a position as a GA working in our academic technology section, where we work on the LMS. We use Canvas. I'm the Zoom administrator, so any of the online technical support and all those enterprise systems that we use, which is about 32 different ones, is all out of my the department I work with VR had already been brought to NMSU before I came upon both Robbie grant and Andrew Sedillo kind of had this great vision, and we were One of the 10 schools to be picked to be one of the first metaversity schools. So they built a digital twin, a part of our campus and a couple of our classrooms, which was great, but then the question was, what do we do with it all? And I finished up my master's about this time, decided I really wanted to stay in higher ed. Luckily, they gave me a full time position, and I'm sorry to thought think of all the things we could do with VR, and they let me come in, and we've done some great things, though we're a pretty small unit, and that's kind of what I wanted to talk to everybody about. And I'm really happy to get this opportunity. Is there's some great schools doing great big leads, but if they're your smaller school in the educational field, you can kind of get there too, and that's the one great thing about technology, especially using this, XR, VR, AR, all of it together, you can give the students the same experience in different ways. So we kind of really started, and I think my first piece of advice is find the champions. Who's going to be the ones that support you, that want to try new technology, that realize it's going to come with some headaches. It wasn't always a smooth transition for us, and it won't be for anybody. So get that champion behind you, and. And we did our criminal justice. Ida was great. She was a former FBI agent. She was teaching, you know, practicing, kind of the crime scene investigation, and she taught it live. And then she did an online class, and she was like, Man, I want to do the same with my online students. And how do I do this. So Andrew and Robbie worked really hard with her. We have another instructional designer named Colleen, and they kind of came up with a good plan to use it, and she's done amazing lanes with that. And this year, back in May or a couple weeks ago, she got the innovative teacher award at our institution because of what she's doing with VR. So she was our champion. She was the one out there talking about what great things can do with VR, explaining that there's headaches kind of getting everybody logged in, especially we don't have a VR lab on campus. Currently. Think that'll change here pretty soon, but we ship all of our headsets out to the students, or they come by and pick them up, if they're local, and then they return it, and we don't cut the classes. Currently. Don't cost extra if they're using VR. We don't charge the students at any rate, it's all kind of a loaner system done under Academic Technology. I have to give a shout out to Megan, because she organizes it. We have 300 headsets, and when it's true semester time. They're all being used this summer. I think I'm like, at 18 that aren't currently being used, but I feel like that's changing, because someone reached out to me this morning. So we're using all the headsets, and we have a much more than just the criminal justice classes. So if you're looking at the slideshow right now, it is showing you, kind of our growth from Fall of 2024 which is where I kind of came into it, and then the spring of 2025 we had over, like 400% growth, and it was truly by starting with that champion, going out there and talking and explaining what they were doing. The other thing is, I'm not a super tech person, and I know that's probably going to be surprising, like, it wasn't like, Oh, I know everything about VR. I know all this. I know how to code. I don't know none of that, but I'm passionate about it. I'm also maybe willing to put myself out there. We were invited because of the some of the stuff that we were doing at the university. We were lucky enough metta put on a conference of what they considered kind of some of the top things going on. And there were some big schools out there doing great things, and we got to be included in that, even though we're a small school, but we're doing great things, and we're catching them. And at that, I was like, kind of it took a moment back, and I don't know if anybody else has kind of had that. And if you have in the chat where you're like, Where do I even start? So we had classes, but I was like, how do we get to the next level? So I started to put myself out there. I asked questions. And luckily, I know at some universities, there's a lot of silos where people don't really want to share information. They hold on to it, and they just really, kind of like, this is my information, and I'm not going to share it. I really see that the VR XR world is different, though, like people are wanting to share that information. They're wanting to help out. So I asked questions. I was like, Hey, how did you guys get to hear. How did you do this? And everybody has always answered me, so I'm really thankful for that. Nobody's ever said, No, you got to figure it out on your own, you know? And I think that's what's really cool about this community, and what makes it unique and special is, yeah, we all want to do the be the best at it, but we're willing to share that information. So that's where I'd start out. I put myself out there again, not a super tech savvy person. Don't know if I'm the most outgoing person even, but I was like, I'm going to put myself out there, and I'm going to say yes to every opportunity. Because of that, we've been able to grow the program, and I've got to go and talk out of amazing places, do stuff like today, all because of that mindset of I want this to grow, and I'm just going to keep trying. And sometimes some of the stuff I've tried hasn't worked out. Luckily, I have a great director that supports it all. But then there's other times that it has worked out and it's been amazing. So our classes that are now, that we're in the spring, we still have criminal justice heavy, but we also have added hotel tourism management. We've added a Spanish class, dental public health. We've added web conferencing, like designing web conferencing class sets an environment our creative minute Media Institute started using VR kind of start designing, because that's our goal. With our next step, we have another dental hygiene class, and then we have an educational class. So we really increase the number of classes using it. And how we go about that is we all sit down as a team and we talk about a class. When somebody comes to us and they're like, hey, I want to start using VR. Are we talk about what the purpose is.

I see a question in chat saying, Is there a common, like creative common, where people can share development tools and stuff? That is the biggest question, and kind of something that was talked at that meta conference, where a lot of people are doing great things, but nobody knows what they're doing, and they're not like they're not connecting, no one yet. There is a great list that has been compiled of different apps, but there's no central place that I can say is log on here and this is where you would go. We're kind of working on something on our side to maybe work on that, but as of right now, as of today, there's no central place where people can directly connect besides what they're doing on platforms like LinkedIn and stuff like that. So if you figure out that one, um, let us know. Um, at the end, I'll kind of post my LinkedIn follow on there, because we're working on something. I don't know if we'll be the first to get to that common area. I hope we are. But if not, then I'm glad that information is out there for everybody. And as long as whoever creates creates it first, does it well, then it's a great tool for all of us, for sure. So at our university, to start off, like, kind of, it kind of all ties in, though, like, where? How do we get the information out there? We sit down as a team. When someone's like, Hey, I kind of want to use VR. I've done VR demo days where I'll sit up in a makeshift lab and have instructors come in and test out the headset and some of the tools that we're using. Other times, instructors have gotten in conferences and they're like, Hey, I saw this. Do we have the capability? And they're reaching out to us. So we do our team with our my director, my associate director, our other side of the house, which is our instructional design team, myself and Megan, will sit down, and we'll listen to what the instructor wants to do, and we ask, is it even possible? And then, if it's possible, we have enough headsets. We can support it. It makes sense we really start diving into exactly what they want to do. We don't want people using VR just to say they're using VR, but we want it to enhance those classes, and that's something I would if you're just starting out. I would encourage you to do the same, just to have the headsets. And using the headsets doesn't really promote that growth. So sometimes you have to say no, which doesn't always make somebody happy. Maybe you don't have the capabilities, capabilities. You don't have an app that works great with it, you haven't created anything on your own, and it wouldn't enhance the course. So be selective, even if you are just starting out, because you want everybody that's getting in the headsets to have a great experience, and you want the students to enjoy it. You want the instructors to feel like it brought you, know, enhance their class. So if you say yes to everything that may not happen. So we have said no or we've said Not yet, but let's work with you and come up with a different plan. You know, because our students have let us know we do course evals and we evaluate specifically the VR part, if they're using it that if it didn't enhance the class, they're telling us, and they're like, I could have done it without the headset. We know we have to make changes. So being being flexible. If you're coming in and you're doing it on institutional, you want to make sure you're working with those people that are champions, but you also want to make sure that you are working with people that are going to help promote it and to listen to your ideas and that are flexible. So yeah, that's a great VR AR, it's a great Association. I'm part of that love that one. Definitely share that one out if you haven't, if you're not checking out the chat, do so that's a great Association. That kind of tells you a lot of great things. And they have local chapters, so if you are just getting started, or even if you've been doing a while, I would, I would also agree with David there that getting part of getting into those type of groups on there and connecting again, everyone in this community is so great about sharing that information, and instructors are so we see that the university that even though they're teaching dental hygiene and criminal justice, we've made our own Like sub kind of in teams communities where they can still connect about issues that they're having with the headsets or questions that they have. Or how do we motivate students? How do you get students to follow the directions? Because I don't know about anywhere else, but some of our students don't like to read all the way through so how do we get that information to them that they have to have in order to be successful in the headsets. So find the champions. Come start slow and be willing to say no and make sure you're using it to enhance the classes. Those are kind of the big takeaway. Don't just use VR to say you're using VR would be the would be my next couple of recommendations. Questions. So some of the cool apps that we currently are using that have been really helpful to us and kind of have definitely helped us move and grow. Is Victor XR and engage. At one point we're working together. Now they're separate, but that's how we got our metaversity. Was through that, and we hold our meetings and engage, or Victor XR, and there's simulations in victory XR engage, we're that we're able to add some other files. So we're using both of those as our meeting places, depending on the course. So both of those have been great to work with and kind of get started with and getting introduced. And inside of it, YouTube, VR, we're starting off the very basic. It's free, having students in there and using it like on a way that you can connect them to something maybe they can't get to. You know, it's dangerous. Our engineering students, you know, there's might be a nuclear, you know, reactor that they're looking at and stuff. So looking through all of that, start, we can start small with YouTube, VR, another one that we're using for our language classes is immerse, very interactive. The students actually brought it to us, saying, we've heard about this app. They were using something up. They're like, we really like to try it. So we started with a soft pilot in the spring. We're going to do a full launch here in the fall. Actually, our summer classes are using it also, but we're using full launch in the fall, but it's already been popular. We've used all of our licenses, and the student feedback has been great. And then one of the other apps that we're using is body swaps. This works on soft skills, so this can be used in a lot of different departments. We're talking about interviewing skills, working in teams. They have a lot of health care part, like how to talk to patients and everything. And the great thing about that app is it kind of gives them a little bit of practice. Then they have their ar, ar, their avatar that is going to like they're going to do their talk or their presentation or their interview, and then why it's called body swaps is they get to watch that avatar. So if they're swinging back to fourth or they're looking down, they're going to see their avatar. So it's a little bit less than if you're watching a video of yourself, you don't feel as self conscious, like everybody, even in the zoom, you kind of avoid looking at yourself. But this one is an avatar that stakes, you know, you feel a little bit safer, and they get an AI feedback if you said um, 500 times, it's going to let you know that, and they can improve upon it. So our engineering departments using this, our criminal justice departments using this a lot of our departments, and we're bringing it to work on interviews across multiple courses where they can practice interviewing for jobs that they're having up it's been a big hit, but the instructors and the students have really enjoyed it. Our nursing students, I just met with one who was interviewing for an ICU job on Friday, and she was like, Can you Can we run through the simulation? Will you let me do that so I can practice it? She had used, like the project one in class, and she really wanted to practice that. So kind of having students get excited and want to use the apps and ask to use it, even though it's not a class assignment has been a huge reward. So those are just some that we're currently using. We're investigating others. Again, we do everything as a team, kind of not knocking down those silos. So when we find an app, we try it out first to see if it is something we can use. Then we bring it in slowly, like through a pilot program, before we fully launch it, to see what we can get out of it. And the most valuable I love, for those that are here, if there's other apps that you're really loving and that you're using a lot to put them in chat, just having to the chance to meet and talk with them, and so far, all of these apps that we're using, especially including the paid ones, the support side has been huge for us, because this is a new frontier. Sometimes there's going to be glitches and there's going to be you know, stuff to figure out. All of them have been super responsive. Random questions. Have answered it. Our students have gotten help because it's that ease of use that's important, whether it's getting on the headset or getting into an app. If we can eliminate all the barriers for those students that they want to be on, be able to put on their headset and go and that's kind of what we've tried to do. We have a man we use the Manage meta management system, which fully launched for educators here a couple months ago

as a way to manage the headsets and the apps that we're pushing out. But we also have a tracking system that we don't use Excel anymore because we were having Excel sheets, it was death by Excel. So we're using a project management tool to kind of keep track. Of which student has which headset, if we've set an account and certain things for them, all of that's in there. So it's definitely moving fast. So having great partners that are going to get back to us answer questions, that's been huge for us, and that's allowed us to be able to scale it the way we have, and quadruple not only the number of students and headsets from in the fall was around 100 to over 500 by the by today and just a semester. But also our special projects, which some of those special projects I'm going to talk about here in a second, because we're we realize, after talking to other schools, one of the big things is we want students to be creating. We want the students to learn the skills. And that's something we're working really hard and getting towards to have that the students are developing. That's next step for us. We feel like we're doing really well on the course side, and we want that student involvement. So one of the cool names that we've used is AI avatars in headset. And the students have loved this, and other people have really loved this. So we're able to we did this one in engage work. We created two characters. One is Dr Coleman. There. She's our chancellor of NMSU global, and we fed her only information about the Global Campus. So we're adding the AI component to the VR side. And so in the when they're meeting in VR, they can ask Dr Coleman any questions about the Global Campus. You know, what the classes are like, what degrees we offered, and she's able to answer it all. The other avatar we created for this example, was our Pistol Pete. That's our mascot. If you're ever around the New Mexico area, it's a little weird that our guy is out there with his guns up all the time. If you're not from here, you don't quite understand them. But that's our mascot there. We filled in with all information about the university as a whole. So if you ask, you know, just like any AI, if you ask these guys about who's going to win the NBA championship, they're not going to answer you. They're going to say they don't know. But if you ask them about the court, what we've programmed them for, it's a really useful tool, and we want to start using it, and other universities are too as a supplement to like the instructor, so we can feed the information from the course and that the students are going to be able to ask questions to their AI avatar and VR about the course and course specific questions and get help. You know, because sometimes students like to do their work at midnight, and some of us like to be sleeping at that time, so giving them that quick time of reaction has definitely increased student engagement and overall students willing to keep trying stay in school. So we're seeing that across the board. So those are two of our examples of our AI avatars there. The next cool thing that we've really started after kind of talking and seeing what other universities and where do we go next after the courses, was we wanted to start creating our digital twins. It's super expensive to have somebody come out and create them. Plus we wanted that student involvement, so we got a Matterport, Matterport pro three camera, and we started going around campus. And we've done the athletic department, we've done the weight room so far, and the engineering department had us go out and scan some stuff for their courses that they could have the students put on the headset and walk around and see it, and that's been huge and amazing and awesome and so much fun. It was really a lot of fun that a older Professor wasn't really for sure what we were going to do with this, but was super open to being willing to try it. You know, even though it was this new technology he had been teaching, you know, this engineering class for years, has actually retired and is just on the advisory board now. But he was like, let me try it. And this week, I got to go in and show him what we created. And we always recommend, like, starting off at like, 15 minutes inside headset to get used to it. But he didn't want to take it off. And he was like, okay, when we do our training, I can show him this and I can do that. So that excitement and that spark. One, we got a new champion out of it. Two, we got to learn a new skill. Three, we got our students involved. It was a win all the way around. So that's been huge for us, and we're excited to see where that goes next. Our ultimate goal would be able to have it fully immersive, to be able to scan and then walk through it. Is where we'd like to be able to go with that. So this is kind of from that scan. This is our Art Museum, as you can see. This is called the dollhouse, so you can kind of see an overview of it all. And we're. Doing a lot of campus around there. You've probably seen these scans done like in the real estate area. They get used a lot for that. We're just trying to figure out how we can use it, and how we can get our students using it, and kind of get all the way in there. So that's kind of where our next steps are, and where we're kind of working out through the summer is really getting those classes fine tuned, making sure we're getting the best classes we can in VR. At some point, we probably are going to look at having a lab on campus, just because sustainability of we have 300 headsets. They're all being used, but we have more interest in it, but it was not a fast process. It was slow. It took time. It took being willing that flexibility to change when something wasn't working and really working as a team, we sit down and we talk about it after every semester, about what went right, what did we do great, but also what do we need to improve upon? And that's that ease of students, like, if you can master getting the students in the headset in the least amount of steps, we've had to work really hard on also, um, getting the students where they they don't have to enter a lot to get in the headset, that barrier away, and we've had to work on our communication. So if students are struggling getting on the headset and we're meeting in a zoom, I've had to learn how to explain that really well. As you can look right to my right is one of my headsets that's always near me, just because of the fact that when a student calls, we have an open like, open lab hours that they can pop in, or if they email, like, I'll meet with them. I have them right here, available, charged. Is a big one lesson I had to learn. I'd often use them and then didn't charge them. And the next student, I'd be like, Oh, man. So just being prepared, knowing what's going on, and having that, it's been huge for us, and being able to help us grow is giving that student that customer service side, or the instructors or customer service side allowed us to grow. So that's kind of overview of what we've done so far, and kind of where we want to go. But I was hoping, like maybe some of you guys had questions about or let us know where you're at, maybe you're further along in the process, and have some suggestions. It looks like David put some great LinkedIn groups inside of the chat. Again, this has been such a supportive, amazing community that always ask and ask for help and ask questions. Nobody's denied it, and just be willing to put yourself out there. This becomes important if you want to grow it, if you want to get excited about it, just keep putting yourself out there. Go to sessions like this. I'm always looking, I'm always researching, to try to find what to do next, or where to go, or how to improve the systems that we're currently using. So it's a lot of research, and depending on what your jobs are, you may have other stuff going on, like, I'm in I'm the canvas, Administrator, zoom, administrator. So time is always a thing. We want to do things the most efficient way possible, and working together is kind of the way we can all do it and expand it. So I'm going to put up my last slide of like where we can can feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, ask more questions there again. I'd love to hear what everybody else is doing if you want to put it in chat, or if you have any suggestions or any questions or comments, I'd love to hear them.

Luis Malbas  
Hey, Melinda, yeah. So what about your biggest challenges? What have they been?

Melinda Cuilty  
Definitely the biggest is the students and headset and managing those I know there's a lot of management tools out there. Our students don't want to, they don't want to, um, put in passwords and email addresses, and that's, that's a barrier, right? Um, so we've worked some ways around there. There's shared mode, for those of you that have kind of used it, that's great if you're in person, not so great if you're far away. And also we still want our students to be able to download other apps if they want to, right, like I can push through the apps I know they need for class. So that's still a hurdle for us. I think it's a hurdle for everybody, like getting them in the headset with the least amount of steps. We haven't quite mastered it. I think every semester we get a little bit better with it, but it's not as smooth as I like. I love it if at some point soon, it had like an SSO, because we do everything with SSO and MSU, they do it once and they're done. I would love to find that, but that would be the biggest hurdle, and then getting people to experience. Sit a lot of people still. And if you know Matt Sanders from meta, he has said this a lot, so I'm going to make sure to give him credit for that, is they still see a headset as only a gaming tool and not an educational device. So that's another one of those issues that we are overcoming, you know. But the same thing with an iPad, you know, not that long ago, everyone's like, Oh, that's just a fun toy. And now almost every college campus kid that works on campus has an iPad or their phones capable of doing the same lane. So coming over that hurdle that is not a gaming device, and then, of course, accessibility. So I gave you three making sure that the students can get in the headsets, we still have students that feel nauseous, kind of overcome with the with the like overall the glasses part, I will say we use quest at our school, the quest threes. We have a lot less issue with for students than we did with the quest twos. So finding what works and but talking to the students about sometimes they feel like they have to put the headset on so incredibly tight, and then they're getting headaches, and they're like, oh, VR is not for me. And we're like, Okay, well, what if we don't put it on where we have the mark? What if we eat beforehand? What if we ease you into it? So, and our courses are set up that way now, we have one that they're like, try to get them in for an hour right away. And we're like, No, we're going to build up that tolerance. So we're still working with those type of things. Overall, interesting,

Luis Malbas  
cool. Okay, some quick questions here. Nicole's wondering if you can share the slides.

Melinda Cuilty  
Yeah, I can definitely figure out. Let me download those for you, and I can put those in the chat. And

Luis Malbas  
then while you're doing that, David mentions meta reality labs and their teams also work with most of the major companies developing VR. And if you're trying to find tools that may work best, their education teams can also help you find what the best place to start is Kaushik Sengupta is asking about the VR AR Association. Does it require a paid membership for universities? And

Melinda Cuilty  
it seems like David knows a lot about it. Some of you can get access to some of their materials without being a paid member their LinkedIn group. They post their newsletter and stuff there is paid individual that I know of and paid at the university level. But they are pretty they are putting the information out there, also that isn't under a paid wall or anything.

Luis Malbas  
Let's see. David is referencing the walk the plank Challenge is a great way to introduce stakeholders to VR.

Melinda Cuilty  
David, I'm gonna fully admit I've never done the walk the plank challenge, and think I need to know more about that.

Luis Malbas  
It's the one I've seen videos of it. I actually have an HTC Vive and, you know, and I got a years ago, we don't really use it much anymore, but it's just, I mean, it's such an incredible experience all around for sure, but the walk the plank challenge, I haven't done that myself, but I know it's the one where the plank is actually suspended high above, like, you know, Maybe between two buildings or something. And so the point is, is you have to, you know, with your VR headset on, you have to walk the plank and try to, you know, and not fall. But the you know, the experience, the sensation is like, Oh my God, I am going to, you know, plunge to my death if I, if, if I fall off this plank, and I've seen videos of people that are literally like, you know, just crawling on it and and then falling off and screaming. So it's a powerful experience

Melinda Cuilty  
that is awesome. She's I'm gonna check that one out, because a lot of times we use beat saber demo. It's Free to get them used to the headsets right to just get the students in the headset or instructors before we try to jump into the lessons, because, like anything, if you're not having fun with it and you're before we get try to do the lesson part, they're not going to enjoy it. So try that fun. But I'm going to add the walk the plank, Nicole, I haven't forgot about you one driving me or fighting right now. I don't know if you're on LinkedIn, but if you connect with me on there, I'll make sure to send it over to you. But me and the one drive are fighting currently will not share the file. Nice. Gotta love technology, right? Sorry about that, but yes, Nicole, if you message me and stuff, I'll make sure to get those over to you.

Luis Malbas  
So when you do lend the headsets out, how do you know that, like your students aren't I mean, is it okay for them to just play game after game after game and just really, you know? Yeah,

Melinda Cuilty  
I mean, we, we have not currently locked them down so the students can download. We explain them if, hey, if you pay for something, it's you're paying for it. And we're eventually gonna have to return the headset. So, you know, think about before you buy it, but we let them go with it, begin to get them in that headset like and we haven't had yet, knock on wood, any issues. And we always get them returned. We have a very small number, we're talking one or two out of 300 that haven't came back to us. We've been really fortunate. We've bought covers for to kind of work out the cloth, the old cloth, especially the quest threes, come with cloth. We've bought some covers because they do come back with like, face stuff and everything, but for the most part, they come back clean. The biggest thing we don't get back, that we have to remind them of, is the Chargers. Everybody seems to think they can swipe the chargers, you know, for all their other devices. Um, so, yeah, so that's where we're still pretty lucky. Um, the question in the QA about accessibility, I did not see that question, but I will try to find it, yeah. I'm looking through here,

Luis Malbas  
back to Yeah.

Melinda Cuilty  
If you see, I'd love to try to answer it,

Luis Malbas  
if I can. Maybe Nicole, if you

Melinda Cuilty  
Oh, it's on the Q and A, all right, so how have we dealt with accessibility. I see there's a chat in the QA. I'm sorry I didn't go over to the QA. So this accessibility, and think it's a big issue for everybody, right, especially with dealing with VR. So one of the things that we really work on is we've had students that I will meet one on one, like, if they're like, I can't get on the headset, or I have this issue, or I have, you know, I know this about myself. I don't want to share any student data and give any examples specifically, but I will meet with them, and we will try to come up with something if we can with the headset. Now, from one student, it was not going to work at all. All the apps that we currently use can be done on a browser or can be done on a phone, not idea, not quite the same experience, and we know that, but we can work with that, you know, and work with it, and we try to get there. Some students have thought like it was the motion sickness. That's our biggest one is they're like, I get to motion sickness. I get motion sickness. I can't go on roller coasters with that. I go on them, but it does not turn out well for me. So I've had to build up my tolerance. You know that first time I try to stay in an hour and headset because I'm like, I can do this. I'm not going to tell my director, like, this is bothering me. And then I had to take the rest of the afternoon off because I couldn't walk or anything. It was bad. So I think I'm glad I went through that experience, because then I'm like, No, we have to stop it. We have to slowly get the students in there. But yes, the apps that we're currently using are able to use, and I've known that someone has done one with a screen reader before, again, not quite the same experience. And this, I think VR is working on all in general, is to try to get there. But we've had some really good breakthroughs with using headsets we had. I'll just use a personal example. I have a niece who's on the spectrum. My son was at a track meet. It's track meets are loud. If any of you have ever been there, there's throwing, there's running, there's gunshots for the name, it was a little too much for her at this lane. And I talked to somebody before, and they were telling me how they've been using the headsets for meditation. So we were there. I come from work to make it over to track me. It was districts he was throwing. And, you know, her mom's like, trying to be focused and watch my son, but my niece was struggling. So I was like, Hey, let's try this out, you know? So I put it on it was a file I downloaded. It was meditation, and her perspective completely changed, because she was in her own little world. Lid. The rest of the track meet wasn't going off, the running, the wind, the gunshots, you know, for for the runners, the throwing the discus, the hitting everything. And she was great. She put it on when it was my son's turn to throw, she'd take it off, watch his throat go back, and was happy in the little meditation lane. So kind of think of that on the spectrum. Rise was an example that I was able to do that we now can bring back to the university, use it in other ways, which is kind of exciting, and that was just off of a comment somebody had made, and I'm like, Well, what if I try that? What if I could do that? And it worked, but that was a one off. I don't know if it worked for everybody, but it worked in her case. So kind of a long answer, and didn't really 100% accessibility is something I think VR still has, and general, has a long ways to go.

Luis Malbas  
No, that good. Thank you. Thank you for answering that. Let me see here. And

yeah, really, really interesting. I know like it was in 2016 that I bought the HTC Vive, and it was because I. You know, I was producing a conference for here, for tldc, and I wanted to to bring it to the event so that we could, I could share it to folks. But, you know, that's those first few years. We definitely use the heck out of that thing. And I think as time progressed, like having the computer to support the HTC Vive, that was a little difficult, because that computers started to deteriorate. But I know that with the newer headsets and stuff, you don't rely as much on the processing power of an external device. All of it is actually done within the headset itself. So which

Melinda Cuilty  
is crazy, right, to think of how big and bulky, especially those first ones that have wires, and they were on the lane to the and I normally have my sunglasses right on me, but I think I had gone for a walk this morning to now we're so close to having the true wearables, like in glasses and everything, like my my my right bands there, I can listen to music all within there. I can have phone calls, and now it'll even translate languages. So if we can get the headset to the glasses, which is, you know, Orion, there's, there's out there, it's coming close apples, working on products like it's and that's great with competition, right? There's no one company I'm sold on. I think everybody competing to get the best product is the way to go. But, yeah, to have that, and if we get it to the true wearable state that we can have the, you know, mixed reality, I think we're so close to that. I mean, not in the next six months, close, but we're closer than we were a year ago. If you haven't tried on some of those wearable glasses to kind of see the difference between. I mean, because these headsets are so bulky, like they're still heavy, whether the quest threes are lighter than the quest twos and the new ones are even less, but they're bulky. But we get to the wearables, I think we're that's a game changer, and I think that would help our accessibility issues too.

Luis Malbas  
Very nice.

Melinda Cuilty  
All right. Well, can I make one more comment about the accessibility with the wearables? Sure, cool things that, if you didn't know that the wearables, and again, I have the Ray Ban ones, but one of the great things is it will connect a person that is visually impaired to a person that's not, and then when the glasses, they'll tell them what they're saying around them and stuff. So not only can it be used for for language translation, but it can be used to help, like with that accessibility link, which I think is kind of really neat. Oh,

Luis Malbas  
that's interesting.

Melinda Cuilty  
See, I think Google, Google, David, I'm very excited with Google is doing, because that's competition of where they're at and what's coming soon. And I'm really, I'm really excited the lots of the advancements, and it seems like you're kind of in the same spot there. Can the headset be used to describe the surrounding? So the headset, I haven't seen it used that way, the wearables, and I'm so sad, like, I think I took them off and left them in my kitchen, because normally they are on my head. Silly me to try to look somewhat more professional right now, because normally I have my glasses, I can show you, but just the glasses in there a little bit heavier than the normal if you haven't tried them on, little bit heavier than normal glasses. But they can be used to describe the surroundings, and they can connect to somebody that is sightseeing to describe the surroundings and everything and especially, oh, sorry, guys, another thing I get very excited about this, a great thing for accessibility and the headset can be used, though, is people that can't have some color issues and can't see color the same way it's often hard to describe, and we use it for our professors, like when we go through and look at their classes online, hey, stop writing in red. We know you think that's how you say something's important, but some of your students can't see that, so they're missing it, right? So I was able to take the headset and show and have a professor experience that you know, if you're this, you know, have this color impairment, you're going to see the world like this. And after they saw it and headset, they realized how much they had to change their LMS in their course. So I have used accessibility in that way, not exactly, probably what you guys were asking, but it was a cool way to have that firsthand experience. And then it made more sense to the instructor, besides me saying, please stop using red. Please stop using red. Yeah, so

Luis Malbas  
that makes sense. Good stuff. All right. Well, I'm not seeing any other questions. And so with that, Melinda, thank you so much for your your generosity of sharing your time with us and and doing this topic was great to have you. Yeah,

Melinda Cuilty  
thank you so much, and thanks for everybody for joining us. And I loved all the great questions. And David, thanks for all the extra information again. Just share it and keep putting yourself out there and asking more questions. If you're new to this, and if you're not new, keep sharing your information, because that's how we all grow and get better. So thank you, everyone. Love

Luis Malbas  
it and make sure to connect with Melinda. Melinda on LinkedIn, QR code is right there. And with that, we just have one more session left for this event that is coming up at 12pm Pacific, 3pm Eastern, that's with Dan braid weight. Who's gonna be talking about V, I, L, T, so hopefully we'll see everybody there. And yeah, thanks everyone. Bye.