(upbeat music)
Mary Loder- Welcome to Course Stories
produced by the Instructional Design and New Media Team
of EdPlus at Arizona State University.
In this podcast we tell an array of course design stories
alongside other ASU online designers and faculty.
On today's Course Story.
Rachael Kaye - You are on a plane flying into the eye of a hurricane.
This is what hurricane hunters do.
They're a part of the Air Force,
so it is a real-life career.
I know people who have done it.
It's not something most students would get to do
as a part of a normal course,
nor would they probably want to,
but this gives them the opportunity to do it safely.
Christine Moore - They would never get to do something like that
with a traditional resource or reading about it in a book
or even watching a video about it.
They actually have the opportunity to release the dropsonde,
watch the data come in on the instrument,
and then read the instrument, and then report it,
the way that a hurricane hunter would do in the field.
You just would not be able to do that
with traditional resources.
(upbeat music)
Mary - Hi, I'm Mary Loder,
an instructional designer from ASU Online.
Elizabeth Blythe-Lee- I'm Elizabeth Blythe,
a senior instructional designer at Arizona State University.
Ricardo Leon- I'm Ricardo Leon.
I'm a media specialist at the same place.
Mary - Yeah, we work together.
Ricardo - Let's get on with the show.
Ricardo- Okay.
Mary- Okay.
Elizabeth - Who's gonna say it first?
(laughing)
Ricardo - Hi, Mary Liz. Hi, me, Ricardo.
Mary - Hi, Ricardo. Hi, Liz.
Elizabeth - Hi, Ricardo. Hi, Mary.
Mary- Nice to see you guys.
Elizabeth- It's so good to see you guys.
Mary - It's been a long time. Elizabeth - So long.
Ricardo - It's nice to see you guys in person
as opposed to virtual reality,
which is the subject,
which is kind of part of the subject
of today's episode. Mary- Oh, absolutely.
Elizabeth- Oh yeah, I'm into it.
I actually can't be here anymore
because I have to leave to go take this class right now.
Mary- It's an amazing course.
And it was already good
before the integration of the project
that we're gonna talk about in this episode,
because Rachael Kaye was actually
one of our ASU Online Faculty showcase members last year
for her integration of intentional media,
the use of Playposit,
like she's already a very thoughtful instructor,
which you'll see through the conversation.
Elizabeth - There's something about these GPH courses
where all the faculty are unbelievably bright
and so fun to talk to, to work with, to be around.
But each of their courses does a really good job
with considering intentionality
and real world information and skills that they can use,
not just to like, get through this class,
or get through their program,
but like, stuff that you need to know to do today.
Mary - To be a human. Elizabeth - Yeah, to be a human
on the planet and surviving a hurricane,
as we're gonna talk about,
I'm very invested in the storyline that we talk about today.
Ricardo - For season five of Course Stories,
this is the first episode of this brand new season,
a season full of all kinds of really great things.
Now, what are we gonna listen to today?
Elizabeth - So, today we are talking to the faculty and designers
behind the GPH-212 course,
which is Introduction to Meteorology.
Christine Moore, veteran instructional designer,
friend of the pod,
she talks to and interviews Robert LiKamWa,
who is an associate professor at Arizona State University.
And for this episode,
most notably directs the METEOR Studio.
Mary - And it stands for Mobile Experiential Technology
Through Embedded Optimization Research.
But basically it's arts, media,
and engineering coming together
to create immersive experiences.
Elizabeth - We also sit down with Rachael Kaye,
who is a meteorologist and instructor
at Arizona State University.
And most importantly, beyond being a PhD student,
which is really cool,
she's a two-time Emmy Award winner
for her work in meteorology broadcasting.
Mary - Christine just posted on it
and they were like, all excited.
And the picture was so cute.
But they did put in there,
led by Emmy Award-winning meteorologist Rachael Kaye,
under the advisement of Robert LiKamWa,
and then mentioned you next.
Ricardo Leon as a supporting member of their success.
Ricardo - I support their success.
I've been part of the scripting process a little bit,
and it's just really cool to see it grow
and shape up into being something really cool.
So if you have money to give
to help them work on this project, go ahead, give it.
Give it, reach out to us,
and we'll connect you with Rachael.
I think Rachael also gives some contact information
at the end of the episode as well.
But yeah, it's a really exciting project
and we're very happy to feature it here on Course Stories.
Elizabeth - It's a star-studded episode.
It's going to be a movie like, someone's,
who do you think is gonna play you in the real life movie?
Ricardo- I, well, offer only, I only play myself.
Elizabeth - Oh, that's great.
(upbeat music)
Christine Moore- Hi everyone.
My name is Christine Moore
and I'm an instructional designer
with EdPlus at ASU Online.
Today we're discussing GPH-212,
Introduction to Meteorology.
And joining us today is the instructor
and additional project manager
for a component of the course.
Why don't you all go ahead and introduce yourselves?
Rachael Kaye- Sure. I am Rachael Kaye.
I am the instructor for GPH-212.
It's Intro to Meteorology and the accompanying lab.
And for our project that we'll be discussing today,
I am the subject matter expert
and also a PhD student under...
Dr. Robert LiKamWa- Dr. Robert LiKamWa. So great to be here.
I'm a professor, associate professor,
in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering
and the School of Electrical Computer
and Energy Engineering.
And I direct this lab, which we call METERO Studio,
where we do research on augmented reality
and virtual reality.
And we're also a big production studio.
So we have a bunch of students designing
new forms of XR material.
Christine- All right, well, let's give our listeners
a little bit of background on the course.
Rachael, why don't you tell us how this course came about,
maybe some of the learning objectives
and just some high level information.
Rachael- So, I'll start by saying I am specifically
the instructor for the online course.
There is an on-campus version as well
that's taught by another professor.
So I joined unofficially a couple years ago
and started developing the online course from scratch,
which was a big adventure,
not something I'd ever done before,
but with a background in meteorology
and almost a decade in broadcast meteorology,
it was a lot of fun for me to develop those lectures
and put together a really interactive course.
I wanted it to feel fun because weather should be fun.
And so I developed a seven module online class.
And then the accompanying lab,
we cover everything from how clouds form,
how precipitation forms, storm systems,
the forecasting process and careers in meteorology, too.
Christine- And I have to jump in and say
that it is a fun course and it is an exciting course.
And one of the joys of being an instructional designer
is working with new instructors
because Rachael did come to us as a subject matter expert
and hadn't developed or taught in higher ed before.
And she 100% came in with fresh ideas,
ready and willing to design kind of whatever we needed.
She did all of the technological
behind the scenes work herself.
She learned HTML, she learned all of the LTIs
that she used in her course
and designed those assets herself.
She has an incredibly fresh and interesting take
on meteorology being both a subject matter expert
and also a broadcaster.
So, students get a really robust and interesting
and exciting look at something we see every day,
which is weather.
Rachael - It always feels a little weird to like, brag,
but one thing that I do think was a strength
coming into building the class
was my background in broadcasting.
I took kind of unofficial course surveys
at the end of the first few runs of the class.
And a lot of students through that,
or even just through emails, were telling me like,
these are some of the best lectures
that I've seen in any of my online classes,
and that they were more engaging.
I know you guys have this amazing media studio here
to record.
I did start close enough to the pandemic
where I was still recording lectures from home.
By the end, I probably could have been coming in.
But just for consistency, I kind of kept up my setup,
and I made sure that I had like,
a good microphone and good lighting.
Christine - So while we were designing the class,
we always had this idea
of having really high quality visual elements,
but we did run into some issues.
Tell us a little bit about the course
and the technological components,
and the learning objectives that we were trying to meet.
Rachael - I think one of the things
that's really unique about meteorology
is that weather affects everybody.
And even if you're not a scientist
or you don't think that this is something
you're gonna wanna pursue,
it's gonna teach you more about something
that impacts your everyday life.
And I really wanted to drive that home for students
by showing them connections to what we're learning,
from what we're learning in class to the real world.
So like one of the tools that we used
was what we deemed our weather wows.
So each module of the course
starts off with a weather wow moment.
And these are short, honestly, mostly viral videos.
A lot of them are like, they're meant to be quick and fun,
and students watch them at the start of the module.
And it's kind of a hint as to the topics
we're gonna be learning about in more detail.
So an example, I don't know if you guys here have ever seen,
but it's really, because we're in Arizona,
in cold climates, when it's winter,
it's a fun like, social media trend
to take a cup of boiling water outside
and throw it and watch it turn to ice instantly.
And so I had a video of that in the module
on precipitation and cloud formation, condensation.
So, they watched this fun video.
Then we learned about the process
of how that actually happens scientifically.
And then in the study guide for that module,
before we get to the assessments and the quiz,
we return to that video in a tool called Playposit,
which pauses the video throughout
and lets students answer questions.
So it's kind of tying everything back together.
So we really tried to create interactive
and interesting course elements along those lines.
Christine - And very multimedia. Rachael- Yes! Christine - Very multimedia.
Christine- There's video, Playposit, YouTube, lecture, podcasts.
Are there any podcasts?
Rachael - Yes. Yeah.
Module seven on careers in meteorology.
The American Meteorological Society has a podcast.
Christine - And the students also reach out
to meteorologists in the field
as one of the assignments, don't they?
Rachael- I'm pausing because I think-
Christine - Yes, they do.
Rachael - Yes, no, I wanted to remember
if it was in the lecture or the lab.
They do. It's in the lab.
But yeah, so anyway,
we have all of these really interactive elements,
but when it comes to something like storm safety,
which I think is so underrated
in intro to meteorology classes,
I'll say this, it wasn't even a part of the textbook.
And I was like, well,
we're gonna put it in the module on severe weather anyway.
Because what's the point
of just learning about severe weather
if you're not gonna follow that as a career path,
yeah, there's some interest and value to that,
but the real value is in knowing
how to respond to the severe weather.
Christine - Right, talk about something students
would actually use in their life.
Not just what types of clouds are out there
or how the weather associations work,
but how to actually save yourself
when the waters are rising.
Rachael - And I would've felt like it was such a disservice
to my students if they left my class without knowing
how to stay safe if they found themselves
in a tornado warning.
So I incorporated lectures on that
and then when we started looking for more interactive tools
to really engage students and drive those messages home,
that's where we started to hit some more challenges.
Christine, you recommended looking into
some interactive documentaries.
We have a really great one that has a big emotional pull.
It's one of my discussions for that module
where students watch basically an individual,
really talented storytellers experience,
living through the Tuscaloosa, Alabama tornado
and how his community reacted to that.
It's difficult to watch it. It is really emotional.
Christine - It is. It pulls out your heartstrings.
And you can't get through it without a little tear.
Rachael - Yeah, but it does spark
some really interesting conversation with the students.
But we wanted to take that further, right?
We wanted, now that they have the emotional pull,
but how can they then start to practice that themselves?
Christine - Exactly, and practicing it is where Robert comes in.
And we tried to design some kind of learning experience
where students would have the ability
to feel what it's like to be in a weather emergency.
And then, just as you said,
practice how to keep themselves safe.
So Robert, why don't you tell us how you enter the story?
Robert - Yeah, popping into this from a different perspective,
we have this augmented reality, virtual reality studio.
We're always hungry for really meaningful projects
to attach ourselves to.
With immersive narratives, you can tell compelling stories.
So we're looking always for the right stories to tell
with big learning objectives that drive
what kinds of stories, what kinds of experiences,
what kinds of interactive things,
where we wanna place the students, the learners,
inside of these situations in a really visceral way.
And that's something that, you know,
these gamified experiences have the ability to do.
And so we were hungry for those kind of opportunities.
And when we were able to connect on this
around GPH-212 Introduction to Meteorology course,
I think we landed on some really,
really exciting opportunities here.
Weather phenomena, it's just really great to immerse people
inside of the different lenses,
the different aspects of careers in meteorology,
which is actually what we landed on with our experience.
So it's been really, really great,
Really, really meaningful for us
to work on this project.
Christine - I love that you mentioned the career aspect also,
because that is something that we were able
to work into the video game.
And should we call it a video game?
Should we call it an immersive experience?
What term...
Why don't you tell us a little bit
about the interface of the game and how we refer to it?
Robert - Yeah, the experience that the students have developed,
it has very game-like notions to it.
It could be called a video game.
It plays on desktop or it plays in virtual reality.
It'll also play on mobile phones as well.
So this experience that students engage with,
it leads them through what it's like to be a news anchor
that's reporting on data that's coming into their news desk
on a hurricane that's impending on the coast of Florida.
It takes them through being a weather science officer
on a plane where they're dropping instruments
into the hurricane and recording that data
and figuring out what are the different parts
of the hurricane and how do they understand the structure
of this storm that's coming in.
And it takes them through the career
of a rescue officer as well.
Somebody who's out there,
a first responder who's out there,
trying to give guidance to people
who are in the aftermath of the storm as well,
and providing rescue operations.
So by putting students inside of the shoes
of these sorts of careers,
they're giving the students a sense
that they themselves, the students,
could have these sorts of lives in front of them,
not necessarily inside of those careers,
but in similarly impactful roles in the future.
So that's always a really crisp, meaningful story for us
to tell inside of these immersive stories.
Christine - Absolutely.
Rachael - I wanna back up too,
and talk just a little bit more about the process
of how we landed on these career paths
and these experiences for the students.
Because we had a big debate at the beginning.
We were talking more about a tornado experience.
The reason we ultimately switched to a hurricane experience
is because there's so much real life rich data
around hurricanes.
And one thing that I think is really cool
about what we've built
is that so much of it uses that real life data.
So we have real life satellite imagery,
real life radar from a hurricane hunter plane
that flew through the eye of a real life storm.
We have what's called a sounding
that students in my course learn about,
and they're reading that data.
And then storm surge reports from after the storm hit,
you know, really throughout the entire process,
from forecasting to collecting data to the aftermath.
(upbeat chiming)
Mary - So Robert, we wanted to kind of pick your brain
because you're the SME when it comes to VR in my mind,
and AR.
Robert - Oh, well, thank you.
Mary - Yeah. Well, it's true.
And at ASU I think a lot of people see you that way.
What is the difference between VR and AR,
and are there any reasons
that this is not an AR experience as well?
Robert - So, virtual reality and augmented reality
find themselves on what we call a spectrum.
And in virtual reality,
you're replacing everything that somebody sees,
everything that somebody hears,
with a completely virtual environment.
And as they turn their head,
they're moving their head in that virtual environment.
When they're walking,
they're walking inside of that virtual environment as well.
In augmented reality, or mixed reality,
you're actually superimposing virtual elements
onto their physical world.
So they're still seeing the desk that's in front of them.
They're still seeing the floor, the real floor,
they're still seeing the people in the room.
But you also see different augmented objects
from the virtual world in the space.
And as you walk around,
you can see it from different perspectives.
You can touch it and interact with it as well,
but it's purely virtual that's blended and melded
with the physical environment.
Now, you asked about why we went
with the virtual reality route for this case.
When you wanna immerse somebody fully in a narrative,
we think it makes sense to just completely
immerse them inside of it.
So that does mean replacing their entire visual field,
their auditory field, their tactile field,
with something that's a completely virtual experience,
so we can compose the narrative.
But we next wanna look at
what could some augmented reality things be
to teach students about things like cloud formation,
things that are more spatial in nature,
where they will wanna walk around it
and see it from different perspectives,
but see it inside of their space
so they get a sense of scale,
get a sense of place with these different objects.
So Rachael is actually looking at that,
thinking about that for the next generation
of things as well.
Mary - Yeah, so Rachael actually came out,
we have a VR club at EdPlus,
and she came out and showed us some of the,
I think it was act three,
but maybe some of act one as well.
Oh, it was act two. I'm getting hand signals from Rachael.
And it did look like there were like,
interactive components inside the VR.
So kind of talk about that as like,
the meshing of the two.
Robert - Yeah, absolutely.
Inside of virtual reality you can actually have
some of these augmented elements as well
where it does really feel like they're in the space.
They're using their hands
or their controllers to really interact
with these elements as well.
They're able to feel like they're able to jump through
different augmented views as well.
I think we have a few examples of that
inside of some of our different acts as well.
So it's a lot of fun to blend
the physical and virtual together in different ways.
Mary - So cool.
Thanks for sharing your expertise.
Robert - Absolutely. My pleasure.
(upbeat chiming)
Christine - One thing I do wanna say about this immersive experience
is that, you know,
we're really diving into something that doesn't exist yet.
I'm always nervous about saying pioneering,
but we don't know of another instructor-led
immersive experience that uses the resources,
the cross-functional resources available at the university.
Of course, we have Dreamscape,
the Dreamscape Learn project in the bio courses.
That is a next level project
that pulls from major, major resources,
and is a very high profile project at the university.
What we're working on
and what we're trying to establish
is a set of best practices and processes
that instructors across the university
could tap into to potentially develop
these type of experiences for their own courses.
And I mean, that's just something that is really unique
and we're so thankful to Rachael and to Robert
and his team to help, you know, support this project.
And everyone dove, you know, head...
What's the word, head in? Headfirst?
Everyone dove headfirst into the opportunity
and we laugh and say it was the perfect storm of opportunity
to really pull from and highlight all of the resources
that are available at ASU.
Robert - Yeah, it really was a perfect storm.
I mean, we have these students
who really wanna learn about how to develop
as creative producers in their own right.
They're designers, game designers, game developers.
They're 3D artists, they're programmers,
they're storytellers.
They wanna see these experiences come together
and they wanna see themselves
inside of those careers developing these experiences,
which is exactly why we're so hungry
for the right stories to tell,
to put these students in those situations
where they are developing for a real client
with real objectives.
And there's real impactful, meaningful outcome as well,
including measurable outcome as well
of sampling from the students and saying,
hey, what are you learning through this experience?
Christine - And that's a really important detail
that the folks working on developing this project
outside of the stakeholders and advisors are students.
It's a team of student workers
who are getting their undergrad and master's degrees
in various types of media arts, computer sciences.
And I have to say, I was incredibly impressed with the team
that was put together to work
with such young, creative, hungry students
that were willing to work on something
that we weren't really sure
what we were working on at the beginning.
You know, we had this big team building party
at the Science Center just to brainstorm.
And wow, like,
what an impressive group of young people
who are going to do great things.
Rachael - Austin Porter was our project manager,
just graduated with his master's degree.
So we had a mix of masters and undergraduate students.
But I mean, he took the lead on making this happen
because it had been kind of in the works
as a conversation for a while.
And he was like, I wanna take the lead on this.
And he was amazing, just super knowledgeable,
dedicated to the work, receptive to all kinds of feedback,
and just wanted to make it the best it could be.
Alex Vong has been involved in the project
as an undergraduate who,
you could have told me he was a PhD student
and I would've believed it.
Christine - Absolutely.
Robert - And his degree is in Media Arts and Sciences,
which is hosted by
the School of Arts, Media and Engineering,
where we teach students these integral skills
of how to work with others,
artists working with technologists,
working with computer scientists,
to pull these experiences together in really meaningful ways
with a technofluency as a critical component.
(upbeat chiming)
Mary - Technofluency? What even is that?
Ricardo - What's that, Liz?
Elizabeth - Well, good thing I looked it up
because also I wouldn't know otherwise.
And this is another one of ASU's really innovative things.
It's a new term that we have coined,
keyword technofluency.
So they say that it's three things,
fluency with technology, application development,
and implications,
which it sounds like that's the coming together
of multiple disciplines to create a fluid experience.
Ricardo - Implications.
Elizabeth - I have to have Robert come back and tell us more about it.
Ricardo - What was the thing? Didn't Andrew talk about that, too?
This idea that we're...
Oh, what is it? Michael Crow has the thing-
Mary - The digital fluency was what I think Andrew talked about.
Ricardo - But it's more like a moral...
Mary - Obligation to make sure that we're fluent
in digital spaces? Ricardo - But there's a specific term
that Crow's got that it's like-
Elizabeth - He works for us so we should just call him up.
He's on the team.
Mary - He is on the team. He's on the production team.
Elizabeth - Yeah. We should just Slack him real quick.
Be like Michael, what is that word you like to use?
We're on a first name basis now.
Mary - I totally get it. Me and Mikey are too.
Ricardo - There's one that's getting thrown around right now
that it's like...
But it's very specific about
the implications of using these technologies.
Mary - Principled innovation. Ricardo - Principled innovation!
Ricardo - There you go.
It's always what's coming up. Principled innovation.
You can't just make it to make it,
you shouldn't just implement it to implement it.
It needs to be intentional,
it needs to be thoughtful
towards its societal impact.
All the things.
Elizabeth - Yeah. And that's exactly what this course does.
There was a couple things that we talked about here
where they talk about their learning objectives
being at the literal top of their page
for everything that they were doing.
Which one, makes me think about,
you know me, I'm gonna talk about alignment.
It's my favorite thing.
So they talked about how that aligned the project,
the course, how it brought people aligned on the project,
like creating the project,
and getting people kind of on the same pages,
that they kind of had this north star.
But beyond that, with that intentionality too,
that they are not just putting this really cool experience
and for the sake of having a really cool experience,
it is actually filling a very targeted and specific gap
and need in the course.
So they've mentioned, well,
it'd be cool to have this VR experience in everything.
It might not be right for every class.
So you have to think about the implications
of what that's gonna do.
That principled innovation of being intentional
with how we're using the technology
and our time and resources.
Mary - Absolutely because even though VR is cool,
it actually doesn't meet everyone's learning needs, right?
So we have people who really just
can't be in VR environments for a number of reasons.
Ricardo - Oh, sure. Accessibility issues, yeah.
Mary - Absolutely.
And so, I mean, access to a headset.
There's so many things, right,
that could impact a person's ability
to interact in that space in the same way
as the person right next to them,
but they're being very intentional about it, right?
You can still do it on the web browser.
So that takes away the need
to worry about if you have access to the technology
or if you get vertigo when you go into a headset.
So they're being very intentional.
(upbeat chiming)
Robert - So Alex is an embodiment of that program, certainly.
Christine - He is, from a professional development standpoint,
his work in this type of project
is a wonderful example of how a student can grow
and build their skills,
not just from a technological or professional standpoint,
but his team building efforts,
the way that he presented in the meetings.
I mean, just to see someone
who is just starting out their career
handle himself in such a professional way
was what we want from these types of projects
and these types of opportunities for students.
He's a wonderful example of the growth
that can happen when they're given that opportunity.
Rachael - And then I wanna shout out
to Jesse Torres and Krupa Kapadia
who have been two of our artistic directors.
And they, you know, can I say work their butts off?
They work their butts off.
And are really talented artists.
And Krupa right now helping us to set a standard
on adding a lot of depth to the visuals
and really making this look as polished as it can be.
Robert - These experiences, it's pretty incredible,
because you need that cross-functional team.
And that's some of the biggest challenges,
is you need artists to be able to work with developers.
You need to have a script where people respect the script
and are able to understand and find alignment
in how all this stuff comes together
and project managers to pull it all together.
So it's a real credit to the students,
but also kind of their structure
and their way of working
to pull these things together efficiently.
Rachael - Can I talk a little bit more about the script process?
Because that was,
everyone at this table has been involved
in the script writing process to at least some degree,
and that in its own was a really big lift
and something that I'm hoping through our experience
and my research and writing moving forward,
we can help provide a framework for future experiences
to go through this a little more smoothly.
Writing an educational script
for a virtual reality narrative experience
has so many layers.
And so I started as the content expert
and the instructor for the course.
I'm now project manager since Austin has graduated.
Christine, instructional designer, lead for the project.
And the script, Ricardo,
who you guys may not hear when you're listening,
but he's standing here with us.
He's helped with some of the script writing as well.
And in all of the script writing meetings,
we've also needed someone
with a technical background involved
so that we can make sure we're providing the proper cues
for the interactions that we want
to go along with the dialogue.
And that what we're asking for is possible to create.
And sometimes that involves a conversation with the artists.
And then you have to have a storyline that's interesting,
that provides drama and conflict and resolution.
So, you know, that was a learning process for me,
because I haven't done creative writing in years.
And this is creative writing,
but with a very, very particular goal and twist.
And then, you know, Christine,
you were always tying us back to the learning objectives,
which was a good reminder on my shoulder of like, okay,
how does this connect to what we want the students
to get out of the course and out of the experience?
Robert - And we very much derived our process
and were inspired by the process of Dreamscape Immersive
and Dreamscape Learn, actually.
And Walter Parkes this, you know,
legendary Hollywood producer
and his process of script writing.
So we were really taking cues from them.
A lot of our structure and how we even structure our scripts
look very similar to the way Dreamscape Immersive
runs theirs as well.
So a big inspiration from how it's done
by professionals as well.
Another thing for the students to learn from.
Christine - We tried to take a lot of lessons learned
from other attempts at immersive elements
for courses and from Dreamscape.
What were some of the challenges that we ran into
and tried to overcome along the way?
Because we had to be very forgiving to ourselves.
We had to be very gentle with ourselves
because it is a process and it is a learning experience.
And we ran into a lot of challenges.
Robert - I think something that's just unavoidable
with these sorts of immersive experiences,
when you're making a game,
when you're making a VR experience,
you can script it, you can storyboard it,
you can imagine what it's gonna be like,
but you won't really know until it comes together.
And so there ends up being a lot on the cutting room floor
where we thought an idea was really great
when we scripted it, it read a lot better,
but once it manifested together,
it fell a little bit flat, you know,
it didn't feel as fun or interactive.
And so we're actually collecting a lot of feedback right now
to help us guide where should we be focusing
more of our effort on fun, gamified meaningful aspects
and where should we be dialing things down a little bit.
Rachael - I think another challenge was,
I think you phrased it this way at some point, Christine,
or maybe it was you, Robert,
but these aren't my words,
but getting everyone to speak the same language
because we're working with such a varied team
and people are coming with their own expertise
that's so valuable to the project,
but that means we have different goals and visions in mind.
So just getting all on the same page and, you know,
at this point we've been working together long enough
that I think that just kind of happened naturally.
But that was one of the challenges early on.
And then your reminder, speaking of learning from,
you know, other projects and past experiences,
a reminder to keep the learning objectives
in mind from the beginning.
Because if you don't have them there from the start,
it's really hard to add them back in afterwards.
So the first experience that we tested
with students was our second act.
We kind of, just within the team,
call things act one, two, and three.
So act two is flying into the eye of a hurricane
and collecting data.
And so in the the second act,
the questions are a little bit simpler
because we weren't sure how students were gonna react to it.
And what we found when we got feedback,
we had one very honest student
in the first round of feedback who was like, look,
if I just wanted an easy A, yeah, this is great.
But if I wanna challenge my thinking
and learn more from the experience,
maybe one of these questions did that.
But most of them were too easy.
There was only one student who admitted that,
and most were just like, yeah, this is great.
But that was something we really took into consideration
when we went on to develop act three,
which is our emergency support rescue crew experience.
And we started to include Bloom's taxonomy
and the higher levels of thinking and critical thinking
into the questions that we built.
Because to go back and rework a question
after it's been built,
I mean the interface is there.
And so it really-
Christine - Talk about a lesson learned.
I mean just to change a question
involved graphic technological components.
I mean, rewriting the script creatively,
like what happens before and what happens after,
it's not easy to just go back and change a question.
So that was a big lesson.
Rachael - Yeah, and that the questions,
to an extent drive the narrative.
So we actually then, by the end of this,
we started the entire script writing process
by writing the questions first.
And also considering what questions drive drama
and can lead to a really exciting narrative.
Christine - And not just the questions first,
but we went back and we started putting
the learning objectives at the top of every page,
or at the top of every script,
so that everyone,
whether they were designing the graphic element
or the sound, or the question that was asked,
they had a reference point,
which was the learning objective.
And the entire experience is focused
on these particular outcomes
that we wanted the students to leave with.
And in order for that to happen from top to bottom
and completely within the design,
everyone had to know what those were,
be invested in what the learning objectives were aiming for,
and just simply being reminded of them all of the time.
So something as simple as just putting them in our documents
for reference really helped guide that process.
And for anyone listening looking for a takeaway,
just like you would put your goals
on a sticky note on your bathroom mirror,
put your learning objectives
at the top of your project documents
and that will really make a difference.
Robert - Yeah we also, inside of our template,
had central tensions written out,
critical plot points, taglines,
bylines about what the experience was just to remind us.
And you know, I tell people,
the hardest part about pulling these experiences together,
it's not the art, it's not the code,
it's not even the narrative.
It's actually alignment, finding alignment within your team,
because you've got all these different people
working on something.
How do you build that alignment
so that you have a really polished product
that comes together and actually fits together?
So the simplest that you can boil things down
and bring everybody onto the same page,
as simply as possible,
that's what we've found to be very effective.
Christine - Good point.
Because it took everyone being in the same meetings
or in the same room to really help make that happen.
And I think that was one of the biggest lessons
I've learned from working on other immersive projects
is that it is critical that the subject matter expert,
the project managers, the technological developers,
and the instructional designers be present in the meetings.
It's very hard to work through some of these components
when one of those elements is missing.
It unfortunately provides opportunities
that you would have to potentially backtrack.
And so that was something
that we really set a goal as from the beginning
was that everyone would be present as much as possible
so that the design elements were not missing,
there was something wrong with the subject matter,
or as we mentioned before,
a technological component couldn't be executed
because the people in the creative meetings,
you know, thought it could be.
It was so important that everyone was present
and invested in the same goals.
And I know, from my perspective,
that's something that I will push going forward
for more of these immersive types of experiences.
Robert - Yeah, I was happy to see us manage that
inside of our culture, actually.
It seemed to work well with our team.
It is important, the subject matter expertise,
for something as serious as hurricanes
to do things with the right balance of reality.
Obviously it can't be completely photorealistic
for the limitations of working within a game engine,
but having real subject matter expertise
on the project was really helpful.
And luckily we have Rachael Kaye with us here,
a two-time Emmy award winning meteorologist on our team
as a project manager. Rachael - Thanks Robert.
Robert - And a real career meteorologist can tell
what it's really like in the newsroom,
really tell what it's like to be getting real data
and how the rescue teams also operate
because she reports on it.
Rachael - We do also, just along the lines of,
you mentioned photorealism,
within I think in at least one point in each act,
but using act two,
our flight into the hurricane as an example,
I was able to find real life video
of flying into the hurricane we based this experience on.
So just to provide a nice visual,
the student's at a technical desk within a plane,
and you look out the plane window and you can see the storm.
And one of the options that you can click
to look at on your computer monitor
is the live feed from the captain's perspective.
And so if the student clicks that,
they're gonna see real life video on their virtual computer,
what the view out of a real life plane
flying into this hurricane is,
and that video matches what they're seeing out the window,
a virtual version of it.
So that was a correlation
I was very happy we were able to get to work in the end.
Robert - Yeah, we do like blending the virtual and the physical
and I think that was one of the aspects
that the students give us a lot of positive feedback on
and wanted to see more of,
if I remember correctly, on an early version.
Rachael - Yeah.
Christine - Rachael, why don't you tell us a little bit
about the storyline of the experience and the different acts
and how they relate to the actual learning objectives
that we were trying to reach?
Rachael - Yeah, so let me start with like,
the big picture description of the project
because it is a three act experience
that takes students through three different careers.
Each of those careers is also a different timeline
in the hurricane development and forecasting process.
So act one is two days before a hurricane makes landfall
on the coast of Florida,
and they're in the role of a broadcast meteorologist,
which is my area of expertise.
So I kind of helped to create the vision
and the characters that would be involved in act one
and the student is what we ultimately landed on
in the role of a weather producer.
So they're helping their chief get the graphics ready
to tell the public two days before a storm hits
what they can expect, how serious it's gonna be,
what they need to do to prepare to be safe.
And while they're working with their chief
to get the graphics ready,
they get a phone call from grandma,
and grandma is just very confused and very resistant
and doesn't wanna evacuate.
And you know, really, that's just what they say.
How bad is it really gonna be?
And so the student is in this role kind of in conflict
between getting their job done
and helping their family member,
both of which are very important.
And also, to be honest, like, very realistic.
As a meteorologist it's like, oh,
I have a weather hit is what we call them.
I have a weather hit coming up in a minute,
but my sister wants to know how bad this storm's gonna be,
so what do I do?
It took a few iterations to get the grandma right,
but I think she's great, she's fantastic.
Christine - It's also a good example of where the students
were able to inject some of their personal creativity
to the storyline and let them stretch their legs creatively.
Rachael - I have to give McKenzie Likeman a shout out
because the grandma was really her baby.
She brought the grandma to life,
and the grandma was her baby.
But she brought the grandma to life with a lot of character.
And I don't know if you guys have heard
of the Waffle House Index, but it's unofficial.
And so I don't teach it
and like, farthest thing from my mind,
but it is a way to say how bad a storm's gonna be.
If the Waffle House's are closing down,
you know it's a bad storm.
And so Mackenzie brought the Waffle House Index in,
which was such a great idea.
Christine - The learning objectives for act one,
not only our exposure to the different types
of career roles in the field,
but also what was the-
Rachael - Yeah, so the learning objectives,
there are a few that are addressed in act one.
First is to recognize weather information
that's distributed from the National Hurricane Center.
This is actually something I want my students
to be able to do.
Not everyone taking my class lives along the coast,
but you should be able to take a quick look
at that information that's available to the public
and be able to interpret that.
So we incorporate real National Hurricane Center data.
One of the learning objectives is
to understand the steps a meteorologist takes
in a typical workday.
So that particularly applies to act one.
It's kind of incorporated throughout all of them,
but act one is the most, I would say,
clear meteorologist role.
And then describing sources of uncertainty
a meteorologist faces.
Look, I know there's gonna be people
who listen to this and say meteorologists are always wrong
because we get that all the time.
I disagree with that statement.
That's a separate discussion.
But meteorologists are working with a lot of data
and we're predicting the future
and that does come with uncertainties.
And so that's also a quantitative science goal
is to understand uncertainties in science.
So we've really incorporated that into the course
and into act one.
Christine - So after they go through the broadcaster experience,
what's act two?
Rachael - So in act two this is really like,
once in a lifetime, you know,
you can't do this in real life,
I guess is maybe a better way to say it.
You are on a plane flying into the eye of a hurricane.
This is what hurricane hunters do.
They're a part of the Air Force.
So it is a real life career. I know people who have done it.
It's not something most students would get to do
as a part of a normal course,
nor would they probably want to.
But this gives them the opportunity to do it safely.
And so they're in the role of the dropsonde officer.
A dropsonde is a tool you basically drop
out of the bottom of a plane and it falls through the storm
and collects a vertical profile of the atmosphere.
So everything from humidity, temperature,
wind speed is collected with this dropsonde.
And one of the learning objectives
we're really touching on here
is use of meteorological tools.
And so they're releasing the dropsonde
while also looking out the window at the view of a storm.
And then watching that data come in
on what's called a sounding.
And then they're reading that sounding
and collecting that data.
So act two's really fun
and then they fly into the eye of the hurricane
and you can see birds out the window
that have got stuck in the eye,
and we double checked, that does really happen.
Which, you know, just little fun things like that
that we've incorporated throughout the experience.
Christine - They would never get to do something like that
with a traditional resource or reading about it in a book
or even watching a video about it.
They actually have the opportunity to release the dropsonde,
watch the data come in on the instrument,
and then read the instrument and then report it
the way that a hurricane hunter would do in the field.
You just would not be able to do that
with traditional resources.
And what happens in act three?
Rachael - We have a cutscene at the beginning
that does show a view from a family's living room
of the storm hitting.
This is-
Christine - Wait, tell everyone what a cutscene is.
Rachael - Okay, so a cutscene's kind of like,
an intro, passive video, sets the mood,
provides some context and background information,
but the students aren't able to interact at this point.
It is the only, what I would call cutscene,
in the three act experience
because we wanted to show what the storm hitting was like.
But the career path that we're following in act three
is emergency rescue support,
which doesn't come in until after the storm has cleared.
We did debate initially having this happen like,
live during the storm,
and that just wasn't a realistic representation.
So we decided to do this cutscene to show the storm hitting
and then the family needs to be rescued.
And so the student has kind of a fun job.
They're gonna be watching the view from a safe desk,
but a drone, they're kind of piloting a drone,
that's trying to get to the family's house
to get an aerial survey of things
before rescue crews arrive.
Meanwhile, the student is on the phone with the family
helping to give them safety tips,
things to do or not do,
which is, as we've talked about,
safety tips and making decisions throughout this process
is a big part of the learning objectives.
Christine - And also observing the real life aftermath
of the storm from alligators in the water
to downed power lines.
There's a lot in act three.
Rachael - Yes, act three is our grand finale.
And so it's visually the most elaborate.
It's the only one that really takes you on a visual journey.
It's not just sitting in one spot looking around,
which we've done things to make that still,
hopefully, interesting in act one and two.
But this really takes you down a coast
that has been flooded and into the neighborhood
and seeing things that you may not necessarily think about,
which is kind of what you just touched on.
The power lines down,
you can get electrocuted going into flood waters.
People don't think about that.
There can be wildlife, sewage, bacteria.
Flood waters are a big no-no. So this helps to drive that.
Christine - Well, we're getting near the end of the podcast.
So if other instructors hear about this wonderful project
and are interested in starting their own,
number one,
kind of lay out what the process might look like,
an abbreviated version,
and what your recommendations are,
and maybe how they could reach out to resources
here at ASU or at Robert's office
in order to make a project happen for their courses.
Robert - Well, this is why I'm so happy that Rachael
has joined us as a PhD student
because this is what's going to become her dissertation,
is how do we make these projects come together efficiently
so that many different instructors
can come to us with their needs,
we can spin up the student teams,
they're ready to go, they're ready to build,
and push things forward.
So what that process might look like,
I mean, Rachael will probably talk,
but it's gonna involve having instructional designers
have conversations around the learning objectives,
figure out what are the central tensions of the plots
that we want to be creating around that,
the environments, the situations,
creating a set of what we call asset lists
of things that need to be made
to pull them together and then basically producing.
And we're hoping to keep it efficient,
down to like, three-month turnaround time
for some short, you know, five minute, seven minute acts.
And cost them appropriately in such a way
that different units would be able to budget for this
as well.
And just build up teams of students
that will be ready to produce this
as a production studio at scale.
A blend of junior and senior artists, developers,
designers, storytellers, project managers,
that are all able to learn from each other
and build these together.
Rachael - I wanna follow that up
with another question for you, Robert.
If this ends up being a very popular idea
and tons of instructors are coming to you with requests,
what makes something stand out to you as worthwhile?
Because we've been talking recently about, you know,
budget and there has to be funding for these things.
So if you are working with a limited amount of funding
and you can't take on every project,
what makes something stand out as a good fit?
Robert - Well, first thing is I'll turn them over to you
and you'll help us make that decision.
But certainly I would hope that the units themselves,
the academic units,
would bring in some funding themselves
to have this spun up.
We may also have some funding,
discretionary funding as well,
or we could find some external sponsors
or philanthropists that could support this effort too.
We're always looking for that.
But then it's not just about the money,
it is about our time and our teaming
and deciding which stories are really compelling to tell.
And I think it comes down to what can VR really help with
or what can these gamified desktop experiences
really help with?
What are those narrative experiences
where immersivity actually helps the students learn
and embody their future selves, as it were?
That's gonna be a big part.
Christine - Just to build on top of that,
I think that's where the instructional design perspective
starts is when you are designing a course
and you're coming across an element that's missing.
And that's exactly what happened in GPH-212
was that traditional resources and materials
just were not meeting the learning objectives.
And because we had a very targeted gap,
it was easier to say, okay, this is what we need,
this is what it might look like,
this is, you know, the story that we wanna tell.
And everything fell into place
because we had an identified gap
that traditional materials weren't meeting.
And so I would say to instructors or IDs that are listening,
that's a great place to start because yeah,
it would be great to have an immersive experience
in every course.
That's the way of the future,
and hopefully this will be ASU's first
fully virtual reality course.
That's my long game goal.
I don't know about Robert's, but that's mine.
But to really narrow it down
and having a very targeted gap that you want to fill
with an immersive experience I would say is the first step
because everything will fall into place because of that.
Is that too much? Is that too big of a goal?
Can this be ASU's first virtual reality course?
Robert - If we're fast enough.
Rachael - Yeah, I was gonna say,
by the time I finish my PhD, I don't know.
Christine - That's my goal. I'm planting that seed.
This conversation has been great.
Thank you so much for joining us today
to share your experiences
and information about this project.
If our listeners want to learn more about you
or the projects that you're working on
or how they could contact you, how would they reach out?
Robert - Well Christine, thanks for having us first of all,
and thanks for joining us on this adventure together
and building this experience together.
If people want to search Meteor Studio, ASU Meteor Studio,
they'll find all of our contact information,
they'll find all of our ongoing projects.
We've got a lot of different learning
and training experiences that we're developing
so they can find out about us
through searching exactly that.
Christine- And METEOR spelled...
Robert - M-E-T-E-O-R, the thing that falls from the sky.
Rachael - I was gonna say,
and I have to draw one last little attention here
to the overlap between Meteor Studio and meteorology.
Christine - Exactly. Another part of the perfect storm.
Rachael - Yes. Robert - Apparently.
Christine - Rachael, how can our listeners get in touch with you?
Rachael - Slack's great. Rachael Kaye. It's R-A-C-H-A-E-L.
So I do spell it differently.
Or it's Rachael dot K-A-Y-E, last name.
rachael.kaye@asu.edu.
Christine - Any projects that you wanna share?
Anything exciting coming up for either of you?
Robert - Well, we're developing this one out
and we're really trying to study it
and understand what is the impact that we can create here
and how do we replicate that at scale.
That's the big project I think
that Rachael and I are really focused on.
Rachael - Yeah. Hoping to turn this into a paper
I'll be submitting to iLearn,
which is a conference that'll be in Scotland next summer.
(upbeat music)
Elizabeth - It was so cool getting to talk
to these three amazing people and to hear all about
this like, just really cool thing that they're doing.
How they are bringing a really kind of foreign concept,
a thing that you can't do,
bringing it to students.
And it's an introduction class,
which is like, kind of cooler.
Like, you don't have to be super advanced in this program,
this field, to get to take this class.
So I almost looked it up to see like,
can I take this class right now?
Do I meet the prerequisites?
Ricardo - You get some of the practical experience too,
because there's a lot of didactic information
in the experience.
You know, make sure that your gas is off
if you're experiencing this real life scenario.
Elizabeth - My favorite part is learning how to read
hurricane meter...
Oh my god, I can't say it.
Meteorological data.
Data? Mary - Data.
Elizabeth - Just data.
And that's a real skill that not a lot of people have
that you can use today. Right now.
Maybe not in Arizona because we don't get weather.
But if I was anywhere else.
Ricardo - That might be the virtual experience for some people
is like, to be out in the Arizona sun,
and not have to actually be there.
Like, you can fly a plane into a hurricane
in this experience.
You can just, you know,
just see what it would look like with, you know-
Mary - To crack an egg on the sidewalk,
or cook a cookie on your hood?
Elizabeth - One time I saw a hurricane pass by
when I was in New Orleans and that was pretty cool.
It's the closest I've ever gotten to a hurricane.
Ricardo - Before we leave, how can people reach out to us?
Mary - coursestories@asu.edu.
Email us, hit us up on Slack.
You can reach out to Elizabeth Blythe.
You could reach out to Ricardo Leon,
or me, Mary Loder,
and we'd be happy to talk about the future of your course
being hosted and elevated on Course Stories.
(upbeat music)
Ricardo - Course Stories is available
wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can reach us at coursestories@asu.edu.
Course Stories is produced
by the Instructional Design and New Media Team
at EdPlus at Arizona State University.
If you're an instructor at ASU Online,
tell us your course story,
and we may feature it in a future episode.
Thanks for listening.
Elizabeth - It's just like...
Do you want me to start with how-
Ricardo - I'm just a font of just interesting information.
Elizabeth - Yeah, I can't be repeated,
but I will re-say, we're in realm five,
but we are learning about the realms.
I was like, oh my gosh, this is the MC Universe,
where I've gotta understand how Captain Marvel
is gonna interact with realm five
and how he gets from realm one to realm five
through the use of the Infinity Stones.
That's the ASU Realms.
Mary - I mean, kind of.
if you wanna know more about the ASU Realms,
we do have a website.
We'll put it in the teaching,
not the teaching, the show notes.
Ricardo - This is going on as a tag at the end.
Mary - Perfect. Ricardo - Post-credit scene.
Elizabeth - Oh my gosh. We are the MC Universe.