Publications

Abstract

The recent advances in mixed-reality (MR), mobile and related tech- nologies indicate a tipping point in our ability to go beyond the standard educational, and training settings and study adaptive pro- cesses during complex physical, social, and educational interactions in realistic complex environments. Such technologies are exciting because they permit educators to move beyond artificial experimen- tal settings that have limited ecological validity. We hypothesize that using these technologies in a real-world context, where computer generated stimuli are blended with the real-world stimuli, will pro- vide necessary affordances in support of higher-fidelity embodied interactions resulting in more effective skill development, experien- tial learning, training and education. That will, in turn, help address prohibitive social impacts (e.g., resource and other disparities) to provide an exciting opportunity to re-define education and learning experiences while maintaining utility and effectiveness. To illustrate the challenges and opportunities we describe the development and deployment of a HoloLens application for Nurse Aide skills training. The application is used by nursing students at Washington County (Virginia) Career & Technical Education Center. The goal is to augment the student’s experience in the classroom settings and to provide a rich set of educational contents in an MR environment.