Coaching, Collaboration, Industry News, Soft Skills, VR-Related

Foretell Reality for Co-Existence Through Co-Education in Israel Schools

by Pia Behmuaras

May 26, 2023

In the classrooms of Israel’s middle schools, an extraordinary revolution is happening. This isn’t your typical lesson plan or group project, but an innovative and immersive journey into history using virtual reality (VR). Foretell Reality, a leading virtual reality platform, is the exciting vehicle driving this educational transformation.

Imagine Jewish, Muslim, and Christian students embarking on a virtual journey together. They explore historically significant sites, like Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa, Beth Shean, and Ramla, without leaving their classrooms or homes. Yet, they do so as avatars that transcend their personal backgrounds, making them immune to the conventional stigmas and prejudices that could cloud their real-life interactions. This digital exercise levels the playing field, fostering an open exchange of perspectives, and encouraging a deeper understanding of each other’s cultural narratives.

The power of Foretell Reality’s immersive environments lies not only in the ability to show panoramic pictures of these historic sites but also in the unique social interactions they facilitate among the students who are represented as avatars they customized themselves. In Foretell, students gathered around a virtual campfire, sharing PowerPoint presentations about the history of real locations that are related to their heritage. These virtual settings became platforms for playful engagement, whether it’s tossing around a virtual ball, splashing in a digital pool, or simply engaging in one-on-one conversations in various virtual settings.

Click here for more information on the project, and visit our website to learn more about Foretell Reality or to schedule a demo.

Coaching, Collaboration, Industry News, Soft Skills, VR-Related

Foretell Reality’s Conversational AI

by Pia Behmuaras

April 20, 2023

Generative AI-powered language models have exploded in popularity and entered the mainstream in recent months, with the most notable mention being ChatGPT from AI research and deployment company OpenAI.

The new conversational AI feature in Foretell Reality utilizes GPT-3 to enable VR experiences to respond to natural language inputs from users. With this integration, users can communicate with virtual characters in a conversational manner on the Foretell VR platform, similar to real-life interactions. This AI integration could revolutionize the way users interact and engage in virtual environments across multiple industries, including healthcare, education, training, and marketing.

The functionality will provide a higher level of engagement in virtual environments, creating a more realistic and lifelike experience. Applications for the new technology could include soft skills training and enable employees or students to simulate professional and social interactions with customers, partners, and each other.

Foretell Reality General Manager, Dror Goldberg said: “The integration of AI into our VR platform and experiences will help accelerate the adoption of VR technology and make it a more effective medium for our key customers in the education and healthcare sectors. AI can also be used to assess trainees’ performance and provide feedback and analytics.”

Virtual being Jessica listens to voice prompts in VR to answer a user’s questions. The Glimpse Group’s President & CEO, Lyron Bentovim, commented: “This AI integration is expected to be a game changer for the industry driving a much more engaging, realistic, and effective immersive experience. Not only will it enhance the overall user experience but also open up new avenues for interaction and exploration within virtual environments. We are proud to be at the forefront of this technological evolution and will continue to focus on building and implementing the opportunities AI offers across our companies and technologies.”

Foretell Reality’s integration of GPT-3 is certainly another inevitable step towards creating more realistic immersive experiences and is just one of many examples of recent AI integrations that could mark an inflection point for the XR industry in terms of enhanced interactions with virtual beings powered by sophisticated AI models.

For more information or to schedule a demo, please visit our website.

VR-Related

Social Prescription with Virtual Reality

by Pia Behmuaras

February 15, 2023

What is Social Prescribing?

Social prescription is a method used by healthcare professionals to refer patients to non-medical sources of support, such as community groups, charities, or arts and leisure activities. These activities are normally conducted in community centers or social settings. The aim of social prescribing is to help address social, emotional, and practical needs that may be contributing to their health condition.

Why VR?

Virtual reality (VR) is conducive to social prescribing as a way to provide people with non-pharmacological interventions for a range of physical and mental health conditions. VR is a technology that supplements in-person or online activities, as well as a standalone intervention. One example of social prescribing in VR is recreational therapy, where patients get together with therapists virtually to play games and sports or to try out new hobbies.

VR transcends the limitations of social prescribing exercises in person because it removes the logistical hurdles of transportation, space, and required equipment. It also surpasses the capabilities of video calling by allowing participants to interact with each other and virtual objects in three dimensions. It offers simulations that would not be accessible in any other format due to the high cost, the physical and mental availability of patients, or even the rules of physics and nature.

How is Social Prescribing Used?

Overall, the use of VR for social prescribing can be a powerful tool for providing non-pharmacological interventions to patients and helping them to improve their physical and mental health. To use VR for social prescribing, healthcare professionals first assess the needs of their patients and determine which VR experiences would be most appropriate. Next, they refer the patients to the right VR program and follow up to monitor their progress and adjust the intervention as needed. This process is sometimes complemented by metrics provided in VR apps such as speaking time, gaze, and other biosensors if provided by the platform and accompanying hardware.

VR Social Prescribing for Mental Health

Luckily, social prescribing in VR can be an effective intervention for many different groups of people with a variety of mental health conditions. Some common examples are as follows:

Anxiety and stress: VR programs that use techniques such as exposure therapy or relaxation training can be helpful for people with anxiety and stress. For example, a VR program might involve mindfulness meditation workshops for multiple people to come together regularly in VR.

Social isolation: VR programs that offer social support and connection can be helpful for people who are isolated or lonely. For example, a VR program might connect patients with similar health conditions in virtual reality support groups, allowing them to share their experiences and offer each other support.

Other mental health conditions: VR programs that offer cognitive behavioral therapy or other mental health treatments can be helpful for people with mental health conditions. For example, a VR program might involve helping a patient with depression to identify and challenge negative thought patterns by utilizing behavioral therapy techniques like cognitive restructuring.

VR Social Prescribing for Physical Health

Chronic pain: VR programs that offer guided relaxation stretching or yoga exercises can be helpful for people with chronic pain. For example, VR programs that guide patients through a series of stretching exercises and relaxation techniques can help them manage their discomfort and learn from each other. When these sessions are conducted in groups, it can encourage participation and build a sense of community over time.

Physical rehabilitation: VR programs that involve virtual reality exercise and movement can be helpful for people undergoing physical rehabilitation. Especially because they can be done from home at the patient’s will. As an example, a VR program might involve recreational therapy activities like VR golfing or ping-pong to help them regain strength and mobility after an injury or surgery. This, in turn, can help them maintain their mental health as well.

These are just a few examples of how VR can be used for social prescribing. VR programs can also be tailored to the specific needs and goals of the patient, making them a highly flexible and effective tool for improving health outcomes.

Foretell Reality

Foretell Reality is a VR platform used to enhance social interaction by allowing professionals to conduct group or one-on-one sessions with their customers. Among our use cases are support groups, soft skills training, exposure therapy, and recreational activities like roasting marshmallows and playing the guitar by a campfire. We offer professionals customizable solutions that are most appropriate for their patients and use cases. Please visit our website to schedule a demo.

References:

Can digital technologies play a role in social prescribing models? (theiet.org)

VR Applications: 23 Industries using Virtual Reality (virtualspeech.com)

Loneliness and Social Isolation – HelpGuide.org

ChatGPT: Optimizing Language Models for Dialogue (openai.com)

Coaching, Other, Soft Skills, VR-Related

Foretell Reality for Special Education and Soft Skills Development

by Pia Behmuaras

January 26, 2023

In their recent article, Questar III Boces explains how they found success using Foretell Reality in their classrooms for special education. Questar III is a Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) and educates approximately 1,600 students in various programs including career and technical education (CTE), New Visions, pre-K, and special education. Questar III also provides affordable management and administrative services ranging from grant writing to financial planning.

Student Satisfaction

Foretell Reality partnered with Questar III to create training sessions for key soft skills like employer expectations, customer service, and mock interviews for students from three different education centers. 84% of students using Foretell indicated that the VR experience was “easier than in person”, and 14% specified that it was easier thanks to the increased focus on a survey.

The Work Readiness and Transition Perspective

“There are some real benefits to using virtual reality with our students … Not only do we see increased engagement and focused attention from our students, but it also provides them with more knowledge retention and boosted creativity,” says Jon Levine, Work Readiness and Transition Coordinator for Questar III BOCES Special Education.

Levine says that VR classes relieved anxiety for their students because they gave them an opportunity to practice soft skills that they were not exposed to. Indeed, 72% of the students indicate that the use of virtual reality highly benefits their education, and gave the highest score for wanting to see more VR and Foretell Reality applications in future lessons.

Teacher Reviews

“I think VR offers engaging additional practice and create a realistic environment that can help future employees be more prepared for the process.” says a teacher using Foretell Reality as part of the program. “Most of our students are very engaged with the technical world and very much enjoyed their experience,” they add. All teachers interviewed agree on the benefits of engagement and realism provided by VR simulations in classrooms and express positive sentiments about its potential.

Coaching, Collaboration, VR-Related

Industries Using VR for Employee Training

by Pia Behmuaras

December 28, 2022

Learning in VR

The ability to embody a role in learning experiences has proven to speed learning. Virtual Reality (VR) technology allows for completely immersive and engaging training experiences where learners are not just observers or note-takers, but become active participants in their training. At the same time, VR has a unique ability to surround the learner with content, guidance, and feedback that offers a different way of learning than any other technology or toolkit (Adept XR).

Training Solutions

Training is shown to be one of the factors that influence new employee happiness and retention (Lauhman, 2020). In fact, organizations with a strong onboarding and training process improve new hire retention by 82% and productivity by over 70% (Gayatri, 2020). In contrast to in-person and online training, new employee training in VR can be done at any given time or location, without any external distractions. With remote jobs rising in number, VR is in a unique position to help thousands of employers and employees worldwide.

In manufacturing companies, employees who received training in VR or AR produced 30% more goods that met quality standards, made nearly 40% fewer errors than traditionally trained employees, and completed tasks 3.25x faster than traditionally trained employees. (Zawadski, 2020). Plus, by investing in VR headsets for employee onboarding, technology services company Accenture reduced their onboarding costs by an estimated 96.4%. This goes to show that VR can revolutionize not only training programs and their satisfaction but also the future performance of a company.

Just a few other commercial companies that use VR training for their employees are Goodway, Walmart, Porsche, KFC, Lufthansa, and H&R Block. The returns that they are seeing are incredible: After implementing VR training to improve the customer experience, H&R Block employees reported learning essential skills to manage difficult conversations. As a result, the company saw a 50% decrease in dissatisfied customers, a 9.9% decrease in customer handling times, and significantly faster issue resolution times among the representatives who completed the program.

The best part is that VR training can be adapted to any company and need. Without the need for extra personnel, gathering everyone together in a physical space, or programming activities for each new cohort, VR training solutions create a fun and effective learning experience that can be tailored to any company and training. The sky is the limit in terms of physics, equipment, and environments that can be featured in an experience. Not only do you feel like you are meeting new people, but thanks to the practice you get, your confidence increases as well.

Summary

VR provides a fun and immersive way to start learning a new skill, a new job, or even an entirely new career. It has shown benefits across manufacturing, service, and healthcare companies, as well as the military. By taking away the pressure of failure, VR training eases the learning curve. Plus, it drastically reduces the time, effort, and capital required from companies, and increases employee satisfaction.

Foretell Reality

Foretell Reality offers customized training solutions for educational institutions, enterprises, and hospitals. The Foretell platform supports as many as 25 learners at once, so your teams can learn from each other, and get to know their coworkers. We provide detailed analytics and feedback based on body language and speech, as well as performance improvements over time. Please visit our website for more information or to schedule a demo.

Industry News, Other, Therapy and Support, VR-Related

Foretell Reality at AWE with Yale University

by Pia Behmuaras

December 13, 2022

Asher Marks, MD, Medical Director of Pediatric Neuro-Oncology at Yale University School of Medicine, recently spoke at AWE Europe about his collaboration with Foretell Reality. Featured alongside CMO of the Glimpse Group, James Watson, Dr. Marks explained the value of VR in clinical treatments for pediatric cancer patients, a support group therapy in VR, and why the Yale School of Medicine chose to partner with Foretell Reality.

“We needed a company that was going to work with us to customize the experience for what we felt our patients needed, and what our patients said they needed.” Yale Oncology Department chose Foretell because it is a peer-to-peer secured application, has great spatial audio, is hardware agnostic, and is customizable, Dr. Marks says. In his talk, Dr. Marks also highlights how VR has a lack of distraction, includes body language, a shared space, and opportunities for self-expression through avatars. His study participants followed his sentiment, saying “I preferred VR to Zoom due to the fact that it felt more immersive as though I was leaving my house to attend group”. “I would prefer a VR group to a Zoom group, as this feels more immersive” another participant agrees.

“Participation went from 0% to 73% when we put our patients into social VR support groups,” said Dr Marks, highlighting the significant impact the VR-based cancer support groups have had. “It was extremely helpful to be able to vent to people who actually get it”, adds another cancer participant. The support groups aimed to improve psychosocial care for cancer patients aged 18-25. But using the phone was their grandparents’ technology, and using Zoom was their parents’ technology, Dr. Marks says. VR, however, was something new and exciting. As an added benefit, the groups allowed patients with Leukemia to interact without having the increased risk of infection spread. Some patients joined support group sessions from the hospital, and some others were homebound. “I think I greatly benefitted from the group and it made me feel less isolated”, says a patient after participating in the program.

After over 9 months of detailed planning, Dr. Marks and his team ran Phase 1 and 2 pilot clinical trials with assessment tools such as resilience surveys to measure results. The average participant age was 19, and the most common diagnosis of participants was Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia. They had four patients per group, a professional social worker, and an invisible observer. The results were very encouraging: they found statistically significant improvements in resilience. “I was a little embarrassed to be myself, but this group provided me with the confidence to be myself.” adds one member.

Following this collaboration, The Glimpse Group is working to make the implementation, management, and measurement of XR technology in healthcare easy, and to promote more studies and partnerships. As XR becomes more mainstream, the cost of entry will become more affordable, Asher Marks adds. One of the major benefits of this study will be that it sets a precedent for other healthcare organizations, as mentioned in their Q&A.

Collaboration, Industry News, Other, Soft Skills, VR-Related

A Guide to Education in VR

by Pia Behmuaras

November 1, 2022

Introduction

Right after telelearning comes learning in virtual reality (VR). And before you say I have Zoom fatigue, we can assure you that this will be different. Rather than interacting with teachers and classmates through a screen, you will feel immersed and engaged in learning. You can have your next science class underwater and learn about the animals swimming around you– All while seeing and hearing your classmates through your headset. VR creates a sense of social presence that telelearning lacks, and a level of immersion that beat in-person classes.

Effectiveness

Experimental learning, simulations, and role-play all have a large place in VR. It is less about passive learning, like listening or reading, and more about active learning, like practice and discussion. With VR learning, your information recall and retention rates will be higher. The benefits of VR usage in classrooms also include raising students’ success and enabling collaboration across remote participants from different backgrounds. Finally, in areas like language learning, VR can help expose students to the language and culture repeatedly, increasing the depth and breadth of practice (VRScout).

Virtual reality promotes learning by doing. Researchers suggest that increased levels of immersive content stimulate multisensory engagement and can ultimately lead to more effective learning outcomes (Webster 2016). As an extension, an experiment conducted with over 1000 undergraduate STEM students found that VR education improved grades by a full letter grade (DeHart, 2018). The improvement is primarily related to increased engagement and motivation. In addition, VR was found to be more effective in improving knowledge compared to non-VR scenarios like simulations or traditional learning (Chen et al.).

A review found VR education to be particularly effective in STEM, architecture, and medicine, as well as more fundamental skills and knowledge like learning how to organize thoughts (Hamilton et al., 2020). “A relatively small VR device can even act as a whole science lab.” writes Adobe. Think about reduced safety concerns, increased lab capacity, and an end to those nighttime lab sessions. Students are not limited in what they can create, and teachers are not required to have long hours of preparation. And for those who get queasy dissecting a frog, there are simplified simulations.

Accessibility

One way that VR helps level the playing field is by making field trips accessible to all. This is especially relevant for k12 students whose parents often have to pay extra for more engaging learning opportunities (Maristute, 2020). For example, students can travel to recreations of Ellis Island in the 19th century, meet the Egyptians who built the pyramids or go to the moon in a spaceship. Furthermore, many prominent museums and galleries have their exhibitions available in VR for students to explore and interact with at their own pace.

In addition, VR can recreate physically impossible scenarios for students to experience. For example, students can learn history surrounded by the remains of the Acropolis in Athens while conversing with animated gods and goddesses. As a result, VR is spreading among virtual campuses like Edstutia, as well as in brick-and-mortar universities like Harvard University, Nova Southeastern University, and Fordham University. Some institutions, like Harvard University, have also started giving certifications in VR education to teachers.

Implementation

Just like remote work and therapy have not gone anywhere after the pandemic, remote learning is here to stay, taking education to the next level. In fact, a study published in 2018 that VR technologies are now mature enough to be integrated into education as much as any other computing technology (Elmqaddem, 2018). At Foretell Reality, we provide widespread education solutions, from virtual campuses to small discussion rooms and classrooms just like in a traditional school or university. On top of that, our users can customize their avatars, play games, collaborate on whiteboards, and explore 3D objects with their virtual bodies.

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