The VR market is expected to only go up, and by 2025, the market of VR and AR are projected to reach $80 billion dollars with $700 million dollars coming from education (Fransson et al., 2020, p. 3384-3385). Because of the serious investment that the educational industry is putting into VR, it is important that Lafayette College is educated about this technology and its capabilities. Since the VR Hub has not been implemented just yet, professors, such as Professor Hupe, who currently wish to use VR in their classrooms have needed to receive a Teaching with Technology grant from the school in order to finance the VR devices. This grant requires the professor to submit a written statement to the school explaining the reason for wanting the grant, and how they would want to use technology in their courses. Since the school has not made this very difficult to obtain, as Professor Hupe mentioned during his interview that it was quite easy to get approved by Lafayette College, it is very likely that the college will support the further development of implementing VR in classrooms at the discretion of professors by letting them choose whether or not they would find it appropriate to include it in their curriculum. Along with this, furthering research has found a correlation between a higher presence of immersive VR and a more positive experience of learning among students (found in the Social Context of report), which can encourage Lafayette College to accept this technology and feel more comfortable in taking bigger steps to introduce it in more courses.
It is expected that Lafayette College will either be funding the accessible VR devices or have students purchase their individual device, at the discretion of the professor and how they choose to incorporate the technology into their curriculum. For example, it may be easier to have students buy Google Cardboard goggles as part of their class expenses since they are inexpensive, whereas it may be more realistic that the school purchases the Oculus Quest 2 devices as they are more expensive and may not be accessible to all students. Since Lafayette College will more than likely be covering most of the expenses, it is important that the institution is aware of not only the functionality of Google Cardboard and Oculus Quest 2, but also their prices and how often these devices will need to be replaced. The Campus Context piece of the report identified the differences between the Google Cardboard and Oculus Quest 2, and among the differences is the price. The Google Cardboard is $15.00 while Oculus Quest 2 is $299.00. In terms of replacement, it is helpful to note that Oculus has discontinued two of their devices—Oculus Quest and Oculus Go—because they have developed a more advanced device, Oculus Quest 2, which was released on October 13, 2020. The brand Oculus is still a new company since it was founded in 2012, and its first consumer headset, Oculus Rift CV1 was released in 2016 and has since been discontinued. In just four years, they have released a multitude of products and have discontinued many of them in order to promote new and more advanced products. Since this has been a trend seen by Oculus, it is important for Lafayette to take note of this and perhaps be more hesitant in solely investing in one Oculus product when it is likely that there will be newer ones to come out on the market in the near future. There is no research on how often the Oculus devices themselves will last as functioning VR devices since they are new products that have only been on the market for 4 years; therefore, Lafayette College will have to keep track of any potential issues that might lead to the need for replacement.
The economic considerations of implementing VR in the classroom does not only include pricing of units and institutional investment, but also operational cost and management considerations. Should Lafayette College follow through with the plan to develop a VR Hub, it will be a significant investment for the school and we would recommend that Lafayette conducts analyses every 5 years to monitor how the devices are working in the classroom. This would allow the college to gauge how professors and students are experiencing VR, and give them a chance to make any recommendations on how it can be improved. It would be wise that these analyses happen once a semester for the first 2 years that VR Hub is incorporated into the campus infrastructure in order to monitor how the devices are used in the first stages, and how professors and students are adjusting to them. Then, after the first 2 years of this integration when professors and students are much more comfortable with using the devices, we would recommend that Lafayette College then only conducts analyses every 5 years. Along with these broad analyses of professor and student experiences and recommendations for improvement, Lafayette College should also perform cost-benefit analyses every 5 years on existing technology and new technology available to decide whether or not the college wants to purchase new devices. This would ensure that Lafayette makes economically smart choices, and these cost-benefit analyses would compare and contrast the current VR devices and their prices with newer technology. These analyses should also be done every 5 years, as a minimum time span, because it would not be financially feasible to replace these devices sooner since one Oculus Quest 2 unit is nearly $300.
When the VR Hub is established, there will need to be people that are experts with the technology. Lafayette College will need to hire a staff that specializes in VR technology to run the hub and assist professors and students in order to foster a smooth integration. This will be extremely essential in the initial 2 years of the VR Hub, but the staff will still be needed throughout the existence of the hub to provide assistance when needed. Along with the staff, the location of the VR Hub must be decided, and the Skillman Library would be the most ideal place to find a space to store devices and have the staff work since it is located at the center of campus and would be the most easily accessed location. These considerations would give Lafayette the information needed to develop the VR Hub in an economically feasible manner.
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