Building the Learning Metaverse with Monica Arés from Meta

Monica Arés is the Head of Immersive Learning at Meta, where she is focused on building an ecosystem that will allow anyone, anywhere to learn and grow in the metaverse. As a Harvard Graduate School of Education alumna, former math educator, curriculum developer, and planetarium director, Monica is at the forefront of skilling the next generation of AR/VR creators and developing products, programs and content to make learning more powerful and accessible. 

In this podcast, we discuss both the great opportunities and great challenges of the Educational metaverse.

Transcript

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Alexander Sarlin: 0:05

Welcome to Season Two of edtech insiders, where we talk to the most interesting thought leaders, founders, entrepreneurs, educators and investors driving the future of education technology. I'm your host Alex Sarlin, an edtech veteran with over 10 years of experience at top tech companies. Monica Arés is the head of immersive learning at meta, where she is focused on building an ecosystem that will allow anyone anywhere to learn and grow in the metaverse as a Harvard Graduate School of Education alumna former math educator, curriculum developer and planetarium director, Monica is at the forefront of skilling, the next generation of AR VR creators and developing products, programs and content to make learning more powerful and accessible. Monica Arez Welcome to EdTech insiders.

Monica Arés: 1:04

Thank you so much. I'm very excited to be here.

Alexander Sarlin: 1:06

It's really exciting to have you here as well. Monica, you have such an interesting background in education and technology. You've worked in planetariums, you've just done really fascinating things. You've gone to Harvard Graduate School of Education. And you've spent the last five years developing an immersive education ecosystem with meta, which was Facebook. Can you just give us an overview of the timeline of some of your work in education? And what draws you to your current role in the metaverse?

Monica Arés: 1:35

Yeah, absolutely. What's really funny is I feel like this kind of job was definitely not on my radar and early on in my career, for many reasons, including the fact that the technology didn't exist at that point. But also, education just wasn't even on my radar wasn't what I thought I was going to do. And so I didn't didn't really consider it didn't study it. But during my first job as an actuary at Deloitte, I had the incredible luck of being asked if I'd be part of a corporate outreach program that visited public schools in Manhattan to work with the students. And it felt like a nice change for my cubicle and creating mathematical formulas, which is my day to day at that point, I decided to say yes. And so while I was there, I found I loved working with the students, but also realized that I often caught myself thinking about the fact that I didn't really notice a whole lot of teaching and learning going on. So it got me thinking every time I walked out at night, it was like, ah, what was it that got me excited about learning. And I started realizing it was the moments of exploration, and simulations and figuring things out in a way that unlocked my own curiosity. So things like I remember, in fifth grade, we all had to go to this outdoor Ed equivalent on the East Coast. And we were given a piece of paper and they said, Okay, make the strongest bridge, you can and we have a little basket with an egg in it. And none of us got it right. And because we were all trying to fold these fancy bridges, the only way it worked is if you rolled it into a cylinder, because edges are the weakest part of any structure. And so that we all found fascinating, fast forward, then to our junior year, we had to do these history projects. I did an aqua duct, my dad and I spent hours with teeny little cubes, building an entire aqua duct. And I remember us presenting it to the class and someone raise their hand and just said, Well, why does it have all those arches in it? And the first thing I thought about was like, Do you remember back in fifth grade, when we did that in the whole class is like, Oh, yeah. Those little connections, it's like, and so I was like, what was it that made us all remember that right? What was it about that simulation that challenge, that unlocking of curiosity. And then I really realized, again, that when I was in college, I was a math major at the time. And we started to bring in technologies to model orbits of planets, and topographies of mountains. And suddenly, we were connecting what we were doing to the real world, and things came alive. And they started to make sense on a greater scale. So while doing all this volunteering in Manhattan, it just I switched. And I was like, You know what, I think I want to be part of the solution. It was the first time in my career where I went from doing what I could do, because I had the skills to what problems do I actually want to solve. So I was able to switch over, I went to the Harvard Graduate School of Education with a focus of trying to build curriculum, with newer technology to see how we could actually kind of, you know, change the course of education a little bit the best we could. Then I got to teach for 10 wonderful years, I taught math to middle and high school kids at Boston, Latin. And then I taught at a planetarium, and astronomy for all grades. And I loved the fact that I could bring students in and just say, hey, we don't have answers to most of the questions that I'm going to ask you. But in 10 years, they might be right. There's still so much there that we don't know. And being able to bring them in and speak differently than we would in a traditional classroom setting and put stuff up on the dome that allowed us to travel beyond the Earth. It just, you realize after teaching in traditional classrooms, the value that that has on so many students, different kinds of learners, just that opportunity to open things up and not feel like there's a right or wrong. And so science is just one of those subjects where you're naturally curious about it. When you're younger, you go and explore, you pick things up. And somehow in middle school, we tend to take out that curiosity, and it becomes right or wrong. And I think that that is like, again, it's a product, a lot of things within the system. But I just started recognizing some of those trends. And so while I was at the planetarium, a lot of people come in and say, My gosh, you have to do this on a larger level, you need to reach more students than the ones who are here. And so again, the answer was technology, that technology probably was the best way to increase access to education, and fundamentally transform how we learn. So I was fortunate enough to get a job at Amazon. And they were trying to create the sort of this new way of learning online. And it started off in more the traditional ways. It was like LMS questions, trial and error, learn practice. And again, I got thinking, I was like, we have this opportunity, it's technology, let's not just tell them that the interior angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees, let them pull the vertices around and realize they can't break that, that it's always that. And so again, was able to really think through with the team, how can we create more of these exploration based labs that are story based that guide yourself through exploration? You come up with some of that answers? I think curiosity when you unlock it, it makes you want to learn more about something on your own or dive deeper or even just question the way things have done in an effort to find a better way to do it. And we don't often give students that breathing room, we typically, most people around middle school again are like, okay, it's right or wrong, and I have to get it right or wrong. So I liked the idea of using technology to bring that back in sort of that simulation based learning learn through exploration. And when I moved to Facebook, it was in my second week there that someone gave me a demo of a VR headset. And second, I put that headset on, I was like, Oh, this is the medium I've always been looking for to do the kinds of lessons I wanted. And so feel really fortunate was able to sit with the team, build some of the very first VR experiences. And again, old school, old VR throw a photo on your face. And we learned a lot we learned that you can unlock empathy, not having to live a first person experience like we always imagined, but to be able to step inside someone else's shoes and embody someone of a different age, race or gender, really powerful in VR, the ability to do things that are otherwise impossible playing the scale things that are too dangerous too far. Suddenly, we just sort of opened up this world in which we could bring people into these spaces that we couldn't before. Again, the technology was still new, the experiences weren't that great, but it just showed us that there was so much opportunity there. So I enjoyed doing that and realize, you know, most of the educators I'd put in would walk out with 100 new ideas, most of the users would walk out and say, but how do I build it? And so I think then something else unlocked where it's like, oh, yeah, they're gonna be all these jobs and AR VR really soon, we're not teaching people how to actually create with this. And so I was able to go work with the team over on the spark AR side of the house, where they had this tool that you can start building lightweight AR and it was a really kind of fun entry level way to get in there. But we we didn't have a formalized way to teach it. And so as the company who was creating the technology, I felt like we also had a responsibility to help people learn how to create with it because universities weren't doing it yet. They're still not really doing it high schools weren't. And so creating that formalized curriculum, and we very quickly realized the product team came back and said, Wow, you can increase product adoption and retention with education. Let's do more of this. So we were able to really build out that entire arc from beginner to professional to certification, starting with AR But realizing there are a lot of technologies that we need to train people for in the metaverse, we're starting to expand that out. But that was, you know, a lot of fun to see that come to life and sort of the success that it's brought an economic opportunity. And then of course, with education, we're always worried about access. And so it's not a perfect model. But I was able to go within the company and think about, you know, who are we targeting mostly, it was a lot of gamers who could afford the hardware and the technology but not long enough, we had a large arsenal of refurbished headsets just sitting around and actually create a lending program where we get these out to educational institutions and nonprofits. And in return, we'll ask them for some a little bit of lightweight research, right. And so like during the pandemic, we sent a bunch out and students who were traditionally learning on Zoom, realize that even if they didn't do a VR experience, just joining in a place where they could show up as avatars and pass objects to each other and have body language. We learned best with all of our senses. That alone was tremendously powerful. And so we started to again, bring them out to places who wanted to teach differently or connect people differently. In return for research. Our company quickly said, You know what, sending them back is actually really difficult just let them keep them donate like our lending program to a donation program. But right at the moment where you know, everything was kind of shifting and the company finally he's ever doing all these nice little pieces spring them together and, and formalize this as met immersive learning. So that's that's the opportunity we've been able to really bring to life in the last few years.

Alexander Sarlin: 10:10

That's an incredible trajectory. And I think a couple of things you said probably resonate with a lot of people listening, you know, one is the idea of, you know, your career making more and more sense sort of in hindsight, right, the idea that you entered education through something a little bit serendipitous to begin with, and then really got so excited by thinking about, you know, what makes things memorable? What makes education great, and you sort of saw your own experience reflected. I think a lot of us in ed tech, get excited about the scalability like you mentioned, the idea of, oh, you're doing something really amazing in a planetarium. And everybody said, This is so amazing. How do we get it to more and more people. And now, here you are at one of the largest technology companies in the world, building one of the most innovative technology systems that is all about simulations all about immersive experience, it's really, it's very inspiring. I want to ask you, you've been working in VR for education, as you mentioned, since your second week, at meta for five years. And you know, recently, it seems like we've just seen a real explosion of interest in VR education, I would say even broader, you know, extended reality education. There's been more investment in the space, a lot more visibility. People who listen to this podcast know that I talk about this every week or so in our weekend ed tech, there's always something interesting happening. Why do you think that now is sort of a moment for educational VR? Yeah,

Monica Arés: 11:31

it's funny, because I started doing a lot of public speaking on this, probably four years ago or so. Right? And I'd go and even though it was still early on, I think for us, we saw that immersive technology could really start to offer solutions to some of the fractures we're seeing in the educational industry. But I'll tell you, the audience, when I went, they were interested, they were a little curious. But honestly, they were just mainly skeptical. They're like, education is a very slow moving industry. And no one felt confident that that technology would be adoptable anytime soon. And actually, they were they were completely right. But then the pandemic hit. And we were suddenly thrust into this global experiment where we had to bring the entire world online. And we had to figure out how to engage our students without labs, or travel or field trips, or practicums, or even classrooms anymore. And we quickly realized that you can bring access to education through learning online, but what we were delivering was a little bit more in line with with knowledge, right. And I think to really have a meaningful deep learning experience, you need more than knowledge, we had to figure out how to unlock all of the curiosity, the creativity, the connection with people. And so we were faced with this global challenge. And I feel like this solution was one that we were all trying to wrap our brains around. It's like how do we offer the ability to join with others in these digital spaces where we can have a sense of presence and body language and, you know, pass the objects to each other and have 3d visualizations and labs that we can't get to anymore. And I think slowly through all of that thinking, again, from global leaders, the potential affordances of the metaverse became this very intriguing way to increase access to education and transform the way we learn. So honestly, I think it's a combination of the technology is now ready. It's finally at a place where people are recognizing it's worth it. It wasn't five years ago, all of you know, we all got sick, and it was frustrating on many levels. The technology has finally gotten to a place where people know there's still a long way to go. But where we're at is promising enough for us to start to trust it. I also think the pandemic as as awful as it was, in every single respect, really forced the education industry to take a hard look at where we were, almost everyone felt like we knew we needed solutions, but no one quite knew what it was. Now we're at this opportunity. We don't want to waste the pandemic, no one wants to go back to exactly how it was the way before. But what does that new future look like? What is that opportunity in front of us? I think that's where where things start to get exciting. And you know, I'm interested in the fact that like, we used to have this hybrid way of learning or it's like part in person part online. I think what's going to happen now is we get to open up to a Tribrid model where it's still going to be part in person part online. But we can add these digital simulations and these ways to connect to other places other people with a true sense of presence that we couldn't before. And suddenly it just unlocks these new little levers that I think really improve how we can deliver and consume education.

Alexander Sarlin: 14:35

We hear it as a refrain from a lot of people in the EdTech industry that as horrible as the pandemic was, and you know, you can't overstate how horrible it was for the sort of paradigm of how do we communicate? How do we educate? What does school look like what is school for? It really opened everybody's minds. And I think that's probably also true for remote work, which is also another use case for the immersive ecosystem but you But before we go further, I know you mentioned augmented reality in passing, I just want to do a really quick acronym check for anybody who doesn't follow this space, it's a really terrific synopsis of VR in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education that just came out a few weeks ago, they have a really good breakdown, I just want to make sure we all are using the same acronyms here. So XR refers to extended reality, which is sort of the family of all of the different types of, you know, immersive technologies, VR, virtual reality, when you're in an immersive space, wearing a headset, or even if you're just looking at a screen, you're fully there. And there's no real world involved. AR is augmented reality where you actually can see the real world. But there's additional elements on top of it. So you mentioned Spark, you know, making AR courses to teach people how to build, you know, additional tech on top of the regular world. And then there's Mr. Mixed Reality, which some of the headsets and some of the some of the technologies do, which is basically augmented reality, but that recognizes the physical world. So if you're looking at a table, you might see something on the table, and it actually knows there's a table there and you know, the table can block, block your view of it, that kind of thing. And they're all under the family of extended reality. And I think all of them, correct me if I'm wrong, Monica, all of these are part of the immersive learning. Family. Is that right? They

Monica Arés: 16:15

are absolutely. And the other buzzy buzzword that no one can fully define yet is Metaverse, right. And so it's sort of all loads of technology and being able to seamlessly move between them from current 2d platforms, all the way up to immersive components. So I think that sort of that new award, I've never heard anyone define that the same way twice. I think it's still it's still evolving, and it will still take time to become fully realized. But I think for sure, the future of learning will evolve into using all these different modalities. And it will be a collaboration between creators and developers and organizations of all sizes. I think we're finally bringing different people to the table to help improve what we have.

Alexander Sarlin: 16:54

Yeah, and there's different, you know, vendors or different software developers that make all of these different type of reality experiences. It's really a wild ecosystem. So, you know, speaking of the metaverse, it was less than a year ago that Facebook became meta, I believe that was October 2021. It feels like a long time ago. And since then, it's been, you know, devoting hundreds of millions of dollars to building this Metaverse ecosystem. It's basically redefining the company around the metaverse. I have personally been struck by seeing ads for learning in the metaverse from meta where, you know, ones where it shows students going back in time to see the Greek debates or going, you know, being able to play with molecules that are, you know, sides of beach balls. It's really amazing to see this at such a scale. And as someone who has been working towards this vision towards this future for years, what has been like for you to see this incredible pivot from, you know, social media to educational metaverse. And I'm curious if you work, you know, cross functionally more than you have in the past? You know, you've been working on educational VR for years. Are you now more interconnected to other parts of meta?

Monica Arés: 17:58

Oh, absolutely. I mean, the whole journey has been incredible. I think for me, like I said, coming out from that very first job, the vision to be able to do this for the education industry has been so strong, I think I've just been really almost tunnel vision on it. But again, we know now that the climate and appetite for new modes of learning is incredibly powerful, and so accelerated apart by the pandemic, but honestly, it's because the affordances of these technologies is so compelling. And I know it does feel like a huge jump, a lot of people still feel very disconnected from where we're going. And it feels terrifying. But I think if you take a quick look back at the last 40 years or so, and you realize that it's a very natural next step in the progression of the arc of how we bring together teaching and technology. So honestly, I think if you look back every decade or so there's a shift in computing paradigms, right in the 80s. If you were curious about something, you open up the encyclopedia, you were lucky if you found a paragraph and really lucky if you found the picture. I mean, I still remember looking back at the first moon landing, and that picture of Neil Armstrong standing on the moon and the paragraph was like, very factual. I think it had named states distance. But that was my window into that moment in history, and I found it thrilling. I looked at it often, I thought it was very cool. But then, you know, after that, in the 90s, we started to get information from the internet via desktop computers where computers were tethered to our desks and the Internet was mainly one way consumption. It was like a handful of articles published by experts. But during these days, websites had a similar feel, and most of them are read only, but like that was pretty amazing. Start to get more than one article from the Encyclopedia. I started to recognize the potential and then the Internet became a place where knowledge can be shared and created and consumed by anyone. So it wasn't just read only anymore. It became Read and Write websites were dynamic, new content was continuously updating and you could interact with them and then social platforms came to existence. And the Creator world just started to take off. But for me, I think when it comes to learning and technology, it was the invention of the mobile device, it changed everything. Because suddenly, you could just access the world's information from your pocket, when ever you're curious. And if you look at students today, the amount of knowledge they're constantly getting, because they can look things up immediately, whenever they're curious. We didn't have that we had to wait for our teacher, or we had to find it in a book or hear it from a parent. And it was very limited the amount of information we had access to so I think, you know, looking at the next step in that progression, it's really just adding immersive technologies like augmented and virtual reality, so that we can learn in these simulated environments. And it will allow us to be present with anyone, even if they're halfway across the globe, it'll almost feel like we're inside the internet rather than than looking at it. So when you stop and imagine what that can do for learning, right, like we're, instead of looking at that picture in the encyclopedia, you can hop inside it and stand on the moon and get the same perspective as the astronauts. So I think that that shift right there, when you look at it, and the whole arc of the technology and learning history, it doesn't seem that far fetched anymore. And it opens up just as many new opportunities as all the steps in front of it, which I think is great. But you asked too, about cross functional, I do I work, it's great. And actually, this is one of the things I really love about working at Mehta, it's like if you have a great idea, and you want to sprint towards it, you can then find all the experts to kind of bring along and see if they can help you out. And so I've always been a strong believer in cross functional ways of working for two reasons. One, I think diversity of thought is what fuels innovation. And so oftentimes teams are structured by function rather than project or product. So to build diversity of experience through you know, different talents, different ideas, you need to pull people in from other teams, this project in particular was was pretty new, I was really one of the few who is focused on what technology can do for the learning space and how to bring it all together. So the other thing I had to do is I use a phrase teach them how to fish. But that is not an at tech company. And very few people have the background in education, which we all know education functions very differently than most other industries. So by establishing these cross functional partners, I was able to help other teams understand the opportunities we have and the value of the work for this space. And so because of this, we've been able to really create these small satellite teams across many different boards in the company. And they weren't focused on education before. But now they really are. And they're understanding how to unlock these potentials, with the immersive technology that we have. So starting off with a team of one basically, just with a very strong vision to go on. And the drive to bring it to life, it's been really humbling and thrilling to see other teams get involved and now prioritize the work. And, you know, I always joke that when it comes to moving things forward, I don't only have to work with external partners and help them understand the value of changing their model into bringing in these technologies. But it's just as hard with the teams internally to help them see the value of building solutions for education. So it's worth it on both sides. I think there was a study recently done by the National Laboratory. And it showed that while retention rates for lecture style learning were 5%. So again, that's why we all forgot everything we heard reading 10%. And then teaching in VR, it was 75%. Until we start to look at those statistics, you're like, Well, how can we not keep building solutions for it? And then in an another survey, 40% of people said that education is the reason why they want to join the metaverse, it's what's making them curious enough to try it. And to see it, these new solutions really are something that can move the needle. So overall, both outside of the company with partners and internally with teams who are just now starting to understand how to support education, I think the opportunity to build solutions and drive impact for learning. It's just never been more timely or actionable. And so it's been on to try to bring all the pieces together. It really

Alexander Sarlin: 24:02

feels like a an incredible moment in sort of the history of media, as you're saying, starting with photography, going through video. And when internet speeds were fast enough to share and create video going through mobile, as you mentioned, go. And then, you know, now we have enough internet bandwidth and the devices to be able to go immersive. And the fact that at this moment, it's not just a gaming world. I know that you know, when Facebook originally bought Oculus, it was really seen as a gaming platform. The fact that education is, as you say, it's one of the forefronts it's sort of one of the frontiers in which people are going to be trying VR for the first time is through an educational experience. I just think it's one of the you know, we'll look back and it'll be one of the moments that was just one of the big triumphs of of educational technology that was being used for this use case so early in its tenure. I'm really thrilled about it. You know, you've mentioned a couple of some of the use cases of VR that you've been excited about and I want to just name a few that we've sort of seen many of these are ones that you've worked on and sort of get your reactions to each of them and how Mehta has been working to make them real and how you've been thinking about them. Does that work for your monogram salutely. So one use case is the idea of sort of making classic education come alive. That includes things like the metaverse, cities that duplicates of real college campuses, but in the metaverse so that people who are not on campus can still meet with one another, because they can still have classes, they can do labs in a virtual space. There's also use cases, we've talked to the CEO of immerse which does language learning in a virtual space or prisms, VR does sort of spatial reasoning. So there's the sort of classical use case where you're simulating some of the things that happen in traditional education, but in an immersive environment with lots more affordances. That's one use case, there's time travel, moving back and forth in time, the La Brea Tar Pits in LA just put out a augmented reality app where you can walk around LA and see where the animals were when they when the mammoths were there and the saber toothed tigers. That's pretty amazing. And I know that Matt has been thinking about that. There's a virtual field trips, such as you know, going inside the body or going through time are going through space, I guess moving into locations you couldn't see. There's vocational training. So we've seen companies like also VR doing surgical training and fundamental VR transfer VR doing plumbing and construction and sort of, you know, hands on work training. And then there's empathy building, you mentioned sort of perspective, taking the idea of using virtual reality to become a different person to see the world through different eyes. I know that's a lot. But that's it's five different use cases, classical education, time travel, space, travel to different locations, vocational and empathy building. What are your thoughts about each of these? How has meta been been working with these? And what do you think is sort of the future? Is it a combination, or one of these going to really take off?

Monica Arés: 26:55

It's definitely the combination. I mean, there's so many types of learning, there's so many areas where it happens, there's lifelong learner, there's, like you said, the vocational training, the institution learning there, it covers everything, we always joke our audiences, lifelong learners. And to me, I'm like, That's every human out there. But I can't wait until we start to hear a common phrase in learning where it's like, Hey, let's go there, right, and like, everyone pops a headset on and you transport yourself, or let's try it. And suddenly everyone has access to the lab or the simulation or the you know, like, I feel like these are words that that if you think of the combination of like, Now Mary Poppins, they have the sidewalk chalk trying, and they jump in, and they get to go there or Miss Frizzle. And she gets to, like, become really small and go inside the human body. Like, those are now things we can bring into everyday learning experiences, whether you're curious about it at home, because somebody asked you something you didn't quite remember how it worked, like how was a rainbow made or you know, molecular, like whatever it is the reactions. But for educators to have that tool in their pocket of, you know, let's go there, let's let's go back in time and see the ruins of you know, of whatever it is that they're studying, I think there are a lot of opportunities that just weren't there before. And if they were there, it was very hard. And it took educators hours and hours and hours to figure out how to bring that to life. And so that I think, is phenomenal. And we did things like moving Old to New. And so we recently launched it was in the Smithsonian for a little bit. But there's an experience called moonwalk where we took with our partners, the 7000 archival 2d images from the original moon landing. And we were able to use AI and photogrammetry to stitch them all together and create a fully immersive 3d experience. And so what I love about it is it's not an artist's interpretation of what it's like to stand on the moon. It's actual footage taken by cameras that were strapped to the astronauts chest. So only 12 People have been able to go to the moon to date, we're sending more, but they each had cameras, and they took 1000s and 1000s of pictures. And so when you stitch them all together, you actually get to feel like you're there. And so what's amazing about VR is that when you're in the headset, your brain actually gets tricked into thinking that you're there. And I think it's because distractions are minimized. Like you said, everywhere you look around, you're in this experience, there is no screen or edge like you see in a movie or a video. And so this allows you to really connect with the history and the view and all of the emotions that it evokes. And then when you take that headset off, even though you've been standing in the same place all along, you actually feel like you've traveled somewhere, right? I think there's just something unbelievable about that. So our developers we worked with, we're able to bring this to life in such a meaningful way and have it narrated by astronauts and they're just all these really beautiful pieces that came together but it's still original footage, but when you're there you're looking around you suddenly look up and way off in the distance is like the tiniest little Earth half lit up by the very bright sun on the left. And you know, when I looked at the encyclopedia and saw the picture, it kind of stuck in one part of my brain after going through that experience my whole body He feels it, I can remember what it felt like to stand on the moon. And so things like that just open up such an incredible opportunity. And again, access is always important. And so even though this was made as a virtual reality experience, they also created accompanying AR effects, so that you can pop them open in your living room, you can share them with others. So it's not the same as a fully immersive experience. But you actually still get to get little bits and pieces of it, which are just as exciting. But I think you know, and you mentioned, uh, certainly the vocational school training amazing things, they're learning how to do plumbing, welding, even stage design and lighting is really incredible medical training. The example used to OSA VR they ended up doing it's been out long enough. Now I think we announced it a couple years ago at Kinect that it's been out long enough, now they've been able to do some A B testing. And they had two students go through one that had learned in VR, one that hadn't, and it was their first day using the real equipment. And the one that had already trained in VR was able to do it very quickly, very fluidly. It was like he had done it before he had all the muscle memory. And then the other one, he used traditional training methods. He got there eventually. But it was slow. He had to look stuff up, he had to ask the instructor. So they realized that learning in VR showed a 230% improvement in performance, which is like that is just an insane number, I wouldn't have believed it had I not seen the video of that AB test, but really starts to help you realize surgical training is super expensive. And so if you can put at least from zero to one into a headset, and allow students to practice over and over again, where it's safe, and you don't need cadavers, and you don't need all the equipment that you have to reuse and clean, you eventually get there, you eventually have to do that they're not going to let you go from VR to a human. But it allows you to do it in a much cheaper capacity and more effective capacity. get to that point, which I think is great. So I think what's interesting too, though, is it's not just the different way to learn that's attracting people, it is that ability to connect. And that's why like our partner evictory XR who's doing the digital twin universities, you know, they can make digital replicas of a learning institutions so that when you pop in, it looks just like the campus, you can walk into the lobby. And within it, they have these different learning environments. And so one of them is the lecture style room, if there are only six or seven of you, you naturally stand in a circle the way you would with a smaller group, and you kind of see each other's body language, if you're sitting in stadium seating, and someone speaks in the back of the class, everyone whips around because the spatial audio is that good. And so there's just the regular movements and mechanics of how you would normally act in that situation, even though you're all in different parts of the world, become familiar and become pleasing and kind of connect to the group. But they also have brilliantly done the labs, cadaver labs, biology labs, they at one point had a planetarium, you can do different field trips. And so that's continuing to evolve and grow even the campus you can go and throw footballs and you know, just kind of have some of the social scene. And it's great for alumni to come back. And look, it's great for prospective students who probably won't fly to every university they're curious about, they can pop into that class. So it's transforming how we engage with professors, and how students are able to connect. So what I'm super curious about is, you know, we can build VR labs within learning institutions. But how do we actually start using this for all the remote learners which of course there are more and more of now the pandemic has taught us, it's possible, it's not the perfect, you know, combination. It's one of those things, if you can get there go, if you can be at a university, it's better to be there in person, if you can go to Yosemite, it's better to see the National Park. If you can't, though, the hours are really, really good second option that allows you to feel like you have connected to those places and spaces and experiences, much better than just seeing it in a TV video. So it's still figuring out where these experiences are most relevant and impactful, and how we start to connect learners from wherever they are into the places where it's happening.

Alexander Sarlin: 33:56

That's so interesting. I'd love to hear an example when the sort of technology and the content have come together to really make something special.

Monica Arés: 34:04

Yeah, I think the first time I saw it happened was when we had just finished creating and Frank House, which was this really interesting example, if you go to the Anne Frank House today, it's actually empty. And Otto Frank, the only surviving member of the family wanted to leave it that way to represent the void left by the Nazis. So we were able to go in with Anne Frank's diary and historical proof points from the museum itself, recreate what the annex look like when and the visitors were in there hiding and so it became this really compelling history lesson in empathy and humanity. And there are many, many conversations that can happen and and almost everybody studies that moment in history somewhere in their education, so it became relevant to a lot of different places. But that came out right when we released Oculus go, which is our first untethered device. It was a very simple almost like a plug and play. Like if you're in an app, it just it opened it was it was worked really well. It was a very sort of portable way to use VR. And I had a lot of educators come up to me at that point and say, it was the combination of having something like and Frank House, which was valuable and sparked a lot of deep conversations, and was a beautifully done experience with the Oculus go where we didn't need to have PCs, and wires and sensors and everything else that made setting it up very, very challenging. They could just keep it on their desk student could pop it on and see it. And so that combination that I was told was the tipping point that brought VR into a lot of classrooms. So I think we're headed there again, when we start to look at what the glasses can actually start to offer when we've brought together enough valuable content and a very easy way to access it.

Alexander Sarlin: 35:40

You mentioned the Tribrid model before, I think that's so interesting, where you sort of have, you know, in person and virtual and then this sort of third model, which is immersive experiences, and it almost strikes me as the immersive use case can actually cover two of those, right? It could be that you go to an actual college, then you also have a virtual version of the college, which you can use for remote learning or for all sorts of things, which is open all the time, and you know, all sorts of benefits there. And then you have the actual immersive experiences where you're going back in time, or inside a chemical reaction, or all of those pieces. And they're they're very different use cases for VR. One is sort of simulating reality or close to reality, and another is extending reality. But they're both possible with the same technology, the same headset, and they they could be seamlessly that you know, go seamlessly between or you can, the idea of being in a virtual classroom, in VR, and then the walls fall away and you're in space, or you're inside the digestive system, or you're in prehistoric times, or in the middle of the Civil War is a pretty amazing, you know, vision for the future of education. It really

Monica Arés: 36:49

is. And that's why again, at first people are like, oh, we'll just use it for remote learners. And then we quickly realize, actually, even when you're in a class with an phenomenal educator and a whole class full of students, it is still really valuable to have the walls fall away and to suddenly be transported somewhere else. So I think there are use cases that are again, just coming out, we're just realizing where all the affordances are. But it can transform how you learn in person, and it can bridge you into really incredible experiences if you are remote.

Alexander Sarlin: 37:17

Yeah, it's a really exciting vision of the future. And I'm, I'm very bullish on and I'm really excited about it. So I do have to ask about some of the logistics of this future. It's so exciting. But I think there's still work to be done to make it actually feasible. So what do you see as the sort of current barriers to the adoption of educational VR in schools or colleges,

Monica Arés: 37:40

we're early days in terms of and again, it wasn't the first industry out of the box that we started building solutions for. And so it is a consumer experience still. And so, you know, bridging that into learning institutions and settings is there's still many hurdles that we have to overcome. They're not any different than some of the other technologies that we had to also adopt and integrate into schools, we just haven't quite gone through that history or that motion yet. And there's there there's slight differences in all, also, the way that people use this technology is still being figured out. Some people just want it as a remote learner experience. Some people are doing entire days of schooling in there. I think all of that still has to settle itself out. Do you really want to be in a headset that long? To me, that sounds miserable. But there are people who don't mind. I have more of the like 15 minutes, give me something incredible and powerful. I can walk away and ponder and think about and then I want to discuss it. But again, these are we're figuring this out as we go for training, especially when you're trying to learn a new mechanics in a dangerous environment, and VR is the best way to safely learn that. So it's more about like, what is the right use case? And what do we need, of course, if we want to think about education at scale, that enterprise model is still not fully flushed out. We have small solutions in places. But what's remarkable is even without this, even as a consumer device, the number of universities and high schools that are already bringing this into their classroom and figuring it out, even though it's not perfect, it's still very hard to integrate into any kind of institutional network. There are lots and lots of barriers. And we're aware of all of them, we do want to start solving them. But it's just this matter of the timeline still matters of what we can build when and what's the most beneficial hardware is going to continue to evolve and change. And so it's almost like that quicksand feeling of there are some foundational pieces that we started and we're starting to get there, but also distribution partners into educational institutions. Like I said, education works differently than just about any other institution. And so I think trying to understand, what is that level of support that's needed in the professional development? And where are we unlocking these systems so that it is seamless and easy and doesn't interrupt learning in a way that makes it impossible. We have a huge content shortage. We can fantasize about all the incredible experiences we could build But the reality is building them still is very costly. And it takes a lot of time. And because of that most developers are still in the mode where they just want to build something that will be universally appealing and adoptable. We haven't seen quite as many subject specific type of experiences built, certainly not the standards aligned offering, its people are thinking about it, people want to get there, I think it's just in terms of the mass market and where the developers put their time right now, we haven't quite gotten to that granular level. And I think, again, we need the solutions to be there, we need to know there's a place where if you're going to create content and add it, it makes an ecosystem grow, and you get value, because other people are also there, and then learners know where to find it. And you start to bundle those so people know how to adopt it. So all these pieces are kind of still in the mix. They're not fully solidified. But this is ultimately where we need to get to, as an industry so that we can build that trust. And we can build that stability and use case for people to know that they can start to really integrate it into their either day to day, or into their actual institutional learning.

Alexander Sarlin: 41:05

Yeah, it seems like sort of a classic chicken and egg problem where you have, you know, people would create standards aligned are really, you know, high fidelity educational experiences, if they knew there was a market for them. But there aren't enough schools that have headsets or that have an you know, have the infrastructure in place to make that a market. And then, you know, it's sort of which way do you start? Do you send free headsets to lots of different schools, like you've been doing in the past you it subsidize or encourage vendors, and creators and studios to create educational experiences? I think there's a, there's a lot of open questions there. But it's pretty interesting. I want to focus on the cost. You mentioned that, you know, the cost of creating AR or VR experiences for studios, for people who are developing them has been a barrier to entry in the past. And, you know, a lot of these experiences like video games are created by third party sort of specialist studios and then distributed through distribution channels, like in the case of metta, there's the Oculus Store, you can consumers, can you have an Oculus, you can go within the Oculus and purchase, you know, applications within there. How does Mehta think about those relationships between all of these third party studios and partners at to create educational experiences? And how have you seen the sort of cost of development change over time?

Monica Arés: 42:26

And again, I think it was that choice developers, who had the ability to create in 3d and build with Unity and Unreal are like, what do I make? And so it's sort of that, that feeling of where's it worth my time and investment at this point, and, you know, education, we all know the ones who of us who are in it, it's a hugely scalable market, right? I think historically, it was kind of slow moving, which is what gave people pause, but the opportunity for new solutions is here right now. And so these are solutions that weren't options a handful of years ago. And they're so compelling that what I've seen is that even though we don't have a complete system built out yet, I think we're starting to see that developers and creators are recognizing that there is value in actually doing this. So it's starting to become commonplace, especially sort of in that technical higher level training. There's a huge adoption of VR all the sudden, and so I think it doesn't feel so scary or risky anymore, because now everyone's heard of it. Everyone's seen an example or two, everyone can reference that one thing that we're like, oh, yeah, that is amazing. I would love that. And so yes, there's still a way to go. But I think in terms of getting the developers to understand the value, that's fair, that's a shift. I've seen post pandemic, it still is fairly costly. And you know, that will eventually go away as the tools become better and easier. But it is, it is expensive. And so I think the other challenge we have when it comes to educational content, and this is, again, the apps had the same problem we're looking at today, but we can fund the development of some awesome experiences to see the ecosystem. But then those developers aren't able to monetize time after time after time, because we kind of by the readymade experience, most people who are looking for learning content, want it to be free, so that they can bring it into to their spaces. And so that right there, again, we need to once we have more of a robust solution, then you start to really have a better monetization model for our developers and creators in terms of subscription models and in ways that we can do things at scale versus the average person who might come through the Oculus Store, look up an education app and try it because they're curious. And once they try, they see it's great. But now people will search for education. And there's, there's not a huge offering, right? And that's just because of where we're at in that in that system. So we do, the most important thing is sort of building that landing space where we can continue to add to that ecosystem from all sides of the circle, and make sure that we're growing it all together. But like I said, pre pandemic, it was a struggle. I was really pulling a lot of that myself, and now I'm seeing the opposite. I'm seeing people be curious about how to build for it. out what the use cases are and how to use it. So the appetite is on both sides finally, both from the developers and from those that want to be able to consume and utilize educational, you know, immersive experiences. So I think now we finally reached that that beautiful point. But it's still it, it's going to take a combination of the content, the technology, the hardware, and the offerings and partnerships to bring it all to life.

Alexander Sarlin: 45:22

Yeah, I love your focus on partnerships. And it feels like you know, with a new technology, and a new way of doing this, there is so much potential for sort of bundling, it's like, because Oculus and metta were really designed originally, as you know, consumer products, they're sort of everything is designed around an individual buyer. But there are all these ad tech companies out there that are used to institutional sales, you're looking at, you know, the Pearson's, and the Wiley's and the amplifiers of the world. And I wonder if there's some really interesting, you know, partnerships in the future were companies that know the ins and outs of institutional sales to schools and colleges can work with VR studios, or with metal itself to package some of these things together and sort of give people a way to taste them without having to find them on their own. I hope that, you know, the tech ecosystem pulls together and creates those kinds of partnerships. And I'm sure you're you're way ahead of the game on that

Monica Arés: 46:18

it will also there's opportunity, where it's like a lot of the bigger companies that show together, they show up as competitors in the industry, here's this interesting opportunity to show up collaboratively for learning and education. And I think we can actually use this moment to pull some of that in. And then also changing like a lot of developers started in games, but my gosh, talk about like, they have nailed how to figure out how to make something engaging story based, push through, persevere like games have all the right ingredients have a really good immersive learning experience, too. And so they're already experts in what makes something really cool. And helping them know how to maybe make something that we can actually use in the education space. So it's like everyone can shift a tiny bit, whether it's industry or developers, or, you know, those that actually are looking to change how they teach. And I think if we all just, you know, kind of move a tiny bit and shift, we're gonna walk together into something that that serves everyone. Well,

Alexander Sarlin: 47:15

that's an amazing point, I love that you're sort of bringing up the the crossover between VR gaming, or gaming in general, and education, you have some of the same developers, they're both interested in engagement. I did my master's thesis back in the day on games and education. And I was sort of one of the relatively early people looking at that space. There are there are a lot of them. But I love hearing you talk about sort of the combination of the how gaming elements go into education. And I have just one final question, which is, you know, as you think about some of the things that games and education have in common, we sort of saw in the past that there were certain games that sort of put immersive gaming onto the map. So we saw, you know, Pokemon Go become this viral hit that put the idea of augmented reality on the map, suddenly, you had kids walking around parks and going outside and finding Pokemon. And then we recently saw it, you know, beat Sabre as a game that sort of put VR gaming on the map and really showed what it's like to be in a virtual reality environment. And that way, do you see existing product that is sort of the beat Sabre for VR education, or the or the PokemonGo? For AR education, the sort of the landmark that everybody knows that becomes a household name? And if not, you know, do you see one coming? How long do you think it'll be? Yeah,

Monica Arés: 48:28

I mean, one, it's definitely up to the brilliant creators and developers out there to to figure that out. And I can't wait for it to land, just like a beat Sabre did. But those were really pushing the boundaries and trying new things, and bringing that spark to the market. And they all bring something new every time. It's like, every experience we publish, brings that new spark, that new functionality, unlock something that eventually someone will see it and leapfrog it and bring it into something else. And that's kind of how the innovation works. But I love the idea of learning where I'm at. And I think the real superstar is going to be the technology, right? It's going to be when AR glasses of the future are out and they're socially acceptable. You push a button, when you're standing on a street in London, you see what it looks like 400 years ago. Or you can start to overlay information where you're at when you're curious, like, I want to be able to sort of, you know, have that Wikipedia of awesome simulations and experiences that you can just overlay because they're relevant to the space to where you're at, or because you're suddenly wondering where it is. It's all in there and easily accessible. It's still when you're in VR, the headsets, not comfortable finding experiences. It takes many many clicks, right? So it's like, for me, it's when it's in a form factor that's easy to use. It helps you connect to people that allows things to come to life and alive whenever you need to, and creates that like, oh, cool aha moments where you're at, right? In New York City. I'm like, I want to see the Brooklyn Bridge being built. Like over time, I want to see that simulation of like how they did it way back when just overlay it onto the existing thing. So I think Those things really except me. But also when we get to that level, we'll be able to help students stay in class, even if they have learning differences, because suddenly the glasses will allow us to course correct, right things like dyslexic students, we can overlay that dyslexic text right there without anyone even knowing we can help students who have audio differences, because they can turn up the volume or not like there are all these cool things that we can start to do to help students who have visual and audio impairments through these glasses. And no one, it doesn't have to interrupt their learning or the teaching, or like bring them out of the classroom. And so again, all those little moments that we can start to cater learning towards people in a way that makes sense to them, we can remove some stimulation if they need to. And I just think there's this whole new world of opportunity. Right now the technology is a little bit of a barrier, it does it and it's great. But also, we know that it's not quite in the form that makes it seamless. And so as we evolve, and the technology gets to that point, and at that point, I'm hoping our developers and creators have created an incredible ecosystem of offerings, whether it's, it's whether it's working with the companies who are really committed to learning or whether it's sort of the this is a great idea. And I want people to know this, wherever they're at. The opportunities are completely limit this list there. But for me, that magic moment starts to happen when the form factor and the technology is also at that point where we use it enough in our day to day and we just start to get really fluent with it.

Alexander Sarlin: 51:28

It's a really inspiring vision to have differentiated education in VR. And I agree that the technology in the end, the developers and the sort of ideas are going to develop in parallel and something will break through, it's going to be a really amazing moment. We can talk for hours, I feel like we've barely scratched the surface of this huge topic, I want to ask the two final questions that we end the podcast on. One is what is the most exciting trend you see in the Ed Tech landscape right now that you think our listeners should keep an eye on?

Monica Arés: 51:56

I think up and coming, it's mixed reality. I think it's when we're able to not fully block you off from your environment through VR, where we don't have to necessarily look at AR through a flat 2d screen on our tiny little phone. But where we can start to blend the two together and bring things to life and start to understand again, where the future's going through glasses. And mixed reality is that next, I think steps that we're going to hit that will allow us to unlock new ideas, new ways of learning new ways of creating.

Alexander Sarlin: 52:27

Yeah, probably needs a new name, though, because its name refers to other things. I feel like we could have a cool name for mixed reality. It is really exciting. What is a resource that could be a book, a blog, a report, a Twitter feed, anything you'd like that you would recommend for somebody who wants to dive deeper into any of the topics we've discussed today? Yeah,

Monica Arés: 52:46

there are a couple actually, there was recently a list of summer reading about Metaverse books and there were a number of those that that I you know have looked through and that are great navigating the metaverse, which is co authored by a number of metaverse. Thought Leaders is great. One I just started that haven't gotten through, but it's called the metaverse and how it will revolutionize everything by Matthew ball. That's a great one too. And then for education, specific reading, this is a couple years old, but ready learner one is great as well. It just helps again, educators understand the differences between these technologies, the potential future of these technologies, things have evolved since that was published. But for anyone who doesn't know exactly how to start thinking about using these technologies differently, or you know, kind of pivoting their classroom. That's a really nice one. For me, though, whenever I take a walk, I often will just put in the word Metaverse into the podcast app or YouTube. And I love hearing the differences of opinions. I love hearing the different ideas. Not all information out there is necessarily factual or true. But it just I think one of the most important things we can do right now is stay informed and join the conversation, right like moving forward, this is going to take all of us and so those that can join in and learn and read and really kind of feel like you're part of that evolution. I think that's one of the most important things we can do for ourselves.

Alexander Sarlin: 54:04

I love that what a positive collaborative note to end on Monica Arez thank you so much. This has been truly fascinating, and we really appreciate you being here with us on ad tech insiders.

Monica Arés: 54:16

Thank you for inviting me it was a great conversation.

Alexander Sarlin: 54:19

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