Episode 3: Learning in hybrid or remote simulation

Toini Palo: Welcome to the Co-Creating Learning Beyond Borders podcast. In this podcast series, we will focus on innovative, collaborative, and boundary-spanning approaches to education, especially those that encourage people from different backgrounds to create learning experiences together. 

Hello, Frank Guan. We have collaborated together in Design Thinking and Co-Creative Learning through transdisciplinary simulation-based education project. This is project that we have had between Metropolia and SIT, Singapore Institute of Technology. And I have got to know you as VR genius who is well known in Singapore, but also widely abroad. Could you briefly introduce yourself, your name and role in Singapore Institute of Technology, please?

Frank Guan: Thank you so much, Toini. I am very happy to be a part of this project. And I really enjoyed the collaborations with Metropolia. And of course, you know, the faculty, including you and also the students. My name is Frank. I’m an associate professor at the SIT, Singapore Institute of Technology. As a faculty at SIT, my scope is, first of all, to educate the students and also to conduct research related to VR, AR, and also AI. So that is what I do in SIT.

Toini: Okay, thank you. Could you also tell us a bit about your main VR and AR interests in collaboration with students? I know that you are collaborating all the time with a very nice group of students, so it would be very nice to hear more about it.

Frank: I think that my research in VR/AR can be divided into two categories. The first category is the fundamental technologies. The second category is the applications of the VR/AR technologies. For fundamental technologies, we conducted research on the enabling techniques for VR/AR, that includes display, tracking, interaction, and also the content generation. Especially, I think that in the past few years, I have been working with my students on how AI can empower VR and AR technologies. For the application of VR and AR technologies, we work with both the students and with the industry partners and also the international collaborators. to explore how technologies can benefit different communities. For example, you know, for manufacturing, for education, for medical, and some of the other kinds of disciplines.

Toini: Yes, that’s nice. I can find similarities with our purposes to collaborate with the industry and real life and connect students with them. This is some kind of good similarities between Singapore and Finland. What were your first thoughts when we started the preparation for the VR and AR within simulation pedagogy? This is an application of your work.

Frank: Yes. I think that when I first learned about this product, my immediate thought is that there could be quite a lot of potential for the collaboration. Some of the immediate ideas include, for example, we can leverage on the VR/AI technologies to promote remote-based co-learning and co-education kind of applications. Secondly, I think that I’m very happy to work with the students from Metropolia, I think that some of them are from a medical background, okay? I think that is a very good complementary area for VR and AI technologies. So that’s really that I was pretty much passionate about joining this project.

Toini: That’s right. Let’s go to our first theme, which concerns the simulation pedagogy. In Finland, simulation is used in higher education in many ways. And most of us are familiar with using simulation mainly for learning purposes. Through our collaboration with SIT in Singapore, I have learned that simulation can be used also to assess students’ skills. I would say that at least in Metropolia, we are not using it so much in this way, but it was very nice to learn about it, how you use it in Singapore. In Metropolia we use simulation extensively and also train educators to work with simulation, especially in decision-making situations. The idea behind this is simple. In social and healthcare, professionals work with different people in constantly changing situations. What really matters is learning how to quickly understand the situation, keep the goal in mind, and make the best possible decision. And I think that simulation is a very, very good instrument or pedagogical way to learn these kinds of things. From your perspective, what are the key pedagogical differences between learning in classroom and learning through VR simulation?

Frank: I think this is a very good question. First, I agree with you that the simulation-based learning method is quite effective and also quite useful to promote the students’ learning. I think, as you mentioned, there are classroom-based simulation methods. There is also technology, for example, VR-based simulation methods, right? So of course, they share similar kinds of goals to promote the student learning objective and outcomes. There are some kinds of differences. I think, in my opinion, one of the key differences is that for classroom-based simulation learning, in classroom simulation-based learning, it can give the students real-life experience, such that the student can go through the process by themselves. 

However, the in-classroom simulation-based learning has limitations. For example, space, and time slot, flexibility. Of course, you know, to produce the simulation in real life classroom, I think that the cost is also very important. On the other hand, I think for the VR empowered simulations, it can help to mitigate some of the challenges with classroom-based simulation. Because for VR and together with some other technologies, some of these scenarios can be artificially generated, and the students, the learners and the lecturers are constrained by the space, and we have much more flexibility. To make it short, there are some differences. But meanwhile, I think that it’s also important to synergize or integrate the classroom and VR-based simulation learning together by leveraging all their advantages.

Toini: Somehow, I think that it could be seen as we could have a different kind of steps or ways to use simulation so that this VR is giving us more possibilities to use it. First, if I think we could start with VR and make replications, several replications in same situation, and then we can go to classroom where we can have real actors in this simulation session. And, also when we go, for example, other ways, maybe you can have some ideas, but this is very interesting, I would say. You have created some very innovative AR and VR solutions together with your students. Could you share a few concrete examples of how these kinds of innovations could be useful in simulation-based learning? Also, maybe how do you, in concrete way, collaborate with the students? How do you work together with them. It would be very interesting to hear.

Frank: I have been very fortunate to work with my students and my collaborators to deliver quite a number of the VR and AR-based solutions for different sectors. In terms of simulation-based learning, for example, we have work on some of these solutions for medical students and also for the engineering students. I think that first, it’s those kinds of solutions that can provide or can replicate some of the scenarios that cannot be easily duplicated in real life, okay, due to whatever kind of constraints, all right? For example, there are some kind of surgery procedures, okay? It’s not so practical that we try to set up the simulations in the real medical or surgical settings, right? But with VR and AR technologies, we can just virtually replicate the settings. And this can allow the students and also the lecturers to easily to be immersed in that virtual environment and conduct the teaching and the learning. Another example is I think that technologies can connect people even if they are not seated next to each other. They are separately taking the interactions in the classroom or in the learning. In the learning, okay. I think that this is, there is a term for it is so-called teleoperation and telecalibration, okay. They can be put into the same immersive virtual environment. And they can interact with each other and also with virtual content directly. And yeah, even the student from Metropolia, from Finland, they can interact, they can work together with the student from Singapore or from somewhere else. This is how to promote the collaborations, okay, and the cooperations among the participants from different sites. I think these are some of these examples that we have developed in the past for different kinds of applications.

Toini: Yeah, that’s good. Somehow, I see this also as a sustainable way to collaborate and learn from different cultures. and the ways you are acting there and how we are acting here and how we are working in different environments and cultures. This must be very promising. What are the biggest challenges while developing these ideas to work?

Frank: I think that there are some kind of technical challenges, all right? But now the advancement of the technologies, especially with the power of AI, artificial intelligence technologies, I think those technical challenges are being addressed or it will be addressed very soon. Okay. This will make the application of this kind of solution more affordable and more practical. So of course, I have quite a few examples. For example, we can use 3D reconstruction technologies like a NeRF and Gaussian splitting, that can easily and cost-effectively reconstruct the 3D and the 4D scenarios. Yeah, I think that if you really ask me about the challenges, I think that it’s more about how we can kind of rethink about the pedagogy. to embed the technology solutions into the learning, okay, into the classroom learning, such that it can maximize the value from both the classroom-based learning and also the solution, the VR technology-based learnings, yeah.

Toini: Somehow this, our better coach is changing. And I think it is needed also that we are changing our pedagogical ways. And especially, I think that we should enable students’ participation from different countries, from different environments, in different situations. to collaborate, to be part of these learning processes. And I think that VR and AR will be very, very interesting methods or instruments in this way. Yes. Thank you so much, Frank, for this discussion. And thank you all our listeners as well, so it would be interesting to see how this VR and AR is going further in the future. Thank you very much.

Frank: Thank you so much for the time, and this is really my pleasure to have worked with you and also other colleagues and students from Metropolia along the way. I think that is really a nice memory. Thank you.

Toini: Thank you very much. The Co-creating Learning Beyond Borders podcast is produced by the Design Thinking and Co-creative Learning through Transdisciplinary Simulation-based Education Project as part of activity of Team Finland Knowledge Program 2023 in collaboration with Metropolia University of Applied Sciences and Singapore Institute of Technology.