TRAINING GETS TECHNOLOGICAL

TRAINING GETS THE VIRTUAL TOUCH

Organizations turn to online learning and virtual reality as pandemic upends the norm

TYLER ORTON

Field trips to the planetarium or the aquarium have given way to a tighter, school-bound curriculum – for now – as students adjust to the new reality brought by the pandemic.

Mike Irvine sees that changing with what he likes to describe as his “Nature Netflix” venture that can take those field trips directly to students.

“With COVID-19 taking a massive hit on the education system that has already been having lots of challenges … we noticed a significant uptick in usage and need for online resources – quality and curated [resources] in particular,” says the CEO and co-founder of Live It, a technology-driven company based in Nelson, B.C.

The company’s content, offered via an online platform, can bring those field trips to the classroom with programming that includes short tutorial videos and activities for students.

The Live It platform offers games, science experiments and arts and crafts on subjects ranging from visits to B.C. wildfire sites to close-up inspections of salmon runs.

“We’re trying not to be that organization that’s promoting too much of a virtual field trip experience. We do take kids to different locations through our programs, but we keep them short and concise, and so really the idea being that we just want to inspire the kids, get them excited about the world around them and then encourage them to participate in different ways in their own backyard,” says Irvine.

Prior to the pandemic, though, the programming emphasized live events, rather than virtual offerings.

The COVID-19 crisis brought about a sharp urgency for Live It to shift its business model, expand its market globally and begin offering multilingual programming.

“We took our three-year plan and turned it into a three-week plan. We moved on it very quickly,” a chuckling Irvine recalls.

“We had some hindsight on this [pandemic] back in early March, and even before that. So we started to brace ourselves in case everything shifted and it did. So before even spring break had finished, we

were already hard at work to build out our platform, which we didn’t fully have at the time. And then we launched with a free 10-week series of educational programs – we produced a new program every week,” says Irvine.

“It was a huge undertaking. We usually only do one a month, or one every other month, so that was a big pivot for us.… We took on some work staff which took a bit of a risk with it. But we offered all those programs for free because we essentially wanted to support the teachers at the same time as test out building that kind of ‘Nature Netflix-style’ platform.”

The company also had to adjust its pricing scheme.

Organizations were originally charged $35,000 per story produced, but Live It is now shifting to a subscription model whereby parents pay $50 annually, teachers pay $125 annually and schools pay $825 annually.

“It’s been a wild ride. It’s kind of never-ending and at the same time, it’s really interesting to try to see what’s going on in the schools,” Irvine says.

“We are noticing a significant stress and fatigue on teachers. They’re dealing with so much, it’s constantly changing and … one of the things we just want to do more than anything else: save them time. And so what we’re trying to do by recognizing that is give as much heads-up and lead time about all the programs that we’re creating in a particular year.”

Other B.C. tech companies have also faced sharp changes in the way they’ve been deploying technology for training and education purposes.

Just ahead of the pandemic, Burnaby-based virtual reality (VR) firm Motive.io was focused on developing training simulations for clients in oil and gas, airlines and hospitality.

“Obviously, all of those industries have really suffered, and they’re in kind of crisis-management mode,” says Sara Johnston, co-founder and chief operating officer of the five-year-old company. “But then other industries like healthcare have really come to the forefront.”

And like an ambulance rushing to an accident scene, teams at Motive.io and Accenture plc swiftly turned their attention to the COVID-19 crisis, building a training program in eight weeks to help healthcare workers apply personal protect equipment (PPE) as safely as possible.

The VR simulations underwent quality control at the hands of physicians and debuted at B.C. Women’s Hospital before rolling out at the University of British Columbia’s medical school.

“Nobody has time to train anybody else. Not to mention

FROM LEFT: Live It

co-founders Maeva

Gauthier, Melissa

Welsh and Mike Irvine •

SUBMITTED

SFU professor Steve DiPaola says

advances in virtual reality are

injecting some humanity into the

way we engage with technology

• IVIZLAB

that the [protocol] keeps changing,” says Johnston, whose company’s platform allows clients without any coding skills to adjust the program and update it with the latest PPE protocols from the province.

“It’s infinitely more engaging than watching a video on donning and doffing PPE.”

A March 2019 study published in the Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology medical journal found 39% of healthcare workers made errors in removing PPE.

This in turn increased the incidents by which they became contaminated, the research concluded.

The risk facing frontline workers hasn’t been lost on other West Coast VR specialists.

Vancouver-based Virtro Entertainment Inc. has been teaming up with Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT) to develop their own simulations for healthcare workers donning PPE in long-term care facilities.

These simulations feature “virtual humans” that have been programmed using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to hold life-like conversations with trainees.

“Literally, you’re saying something, they’re processing and understanding what that is, matching that against the database and then delivering your response according to what they think is the best answer they can provide to you at that time,” Virtro president Lee Brighton says. “They can literally have a conversation.”

A prototype is being deployed and talks are underway to expand training to healthcare workers across Canada.

Steve DiPaola, a professor at SIAT who specializes in VR and AI, says such advances in virtual reality are injecting some humanity into the way we engage with technology, especially as workers become more isolated while working from home.

His research and oversight of SIAT’s iVizLab includes computer modelling of human expressions and emotion-gesture tracking.

“We have an avatar system that’s able to see if you were there,” DiPaola says.

“[It] would see the emotions on your face it, would try and use those emotions within what you’re saying and then be emotive itself.” WITH COVID-19 TAKING A MASSIVE HIT ON THE EDUCATION SYSTEM THAT HAS ALREADY BEEN HAVING LOTS OF CHALLENGES … WE NOTICED A SIGNIFICANT UPTICK IN USAGE AND NEED FOR ONLINE RESOURCES – QUALITY AND CURATED [RESOURCES] IN PARTICULAR Mike Irvine CEO, Live It