Virtual Work Experience: From Classroom to Workplace

Choosing the first job or selecting a career is a critical step for a modern teenager. Short term placement within an actual work environment has proven to be a powerful means to equip young people with an understanding of the workplace. All Scottish school students are encouraged to undertake such a placement, usually for two weeks, and the school careers and guidance staff are tasked with facilitating this. However, in countries like Scotland where some of the population lives in remote locations including the highland and islands, work placements are often difficult or impossible to provide. Even for city dwellers, relevant work placements are in short supply. Using virtual environment technology deployed over the internet, we introduce a means to provide a wide variety of work experiences to young adults, who would otherwise not have the opportunity within their neighbourhood. The brainchild of Highland and Islands Careers Scotland, as a means to address the above difficulties, this project is a collaboration between the Virtual Work Experience Project Board (a partnership of Learning & Teaching Scotland, The Scottish Government, Determined to Succeed, Careers Scotland, Skills for Business Network and BT Scotland), Glasgow School of Art's Digital Design Studio, Blue Diamond consultancy and Albarphotomedia. It brings together expertise in developing and deploying new teaching technology, careers specialists and educationalists, with specialists in 3D content and web technology. Together we have developed a suite of virtual worlds which evoke real working conditions, not just the physical environments but with interactions with real people (via video interviews) and real processes (via practical narratives). If teenagers living in remote communities or considering their futures at home with their parents are to have access to this experience, these six worlds - containing more than seventy 'avatars' of real working people - must be deployed across the Internet via any reasonable connection. In a school setting, hosted on local proxy servers, they may be accessed by tens of students at the same time. The research challenge was to balance the need for compact and controlled data delivery with game-standard immersive experiences. Our solution comprises strategically designed and executed models and a clever selection of robust web technologies as will be described and demonstrated in this paper. The quality of the modelling, the direct human contact of the interviews and the ready availability of career-guidance material in the surrounding Web combine to provide an effective solution to this socio-geographic problem. Repeated field tests in schools, resulted in widespread acceptance and enthusiasm. Game-players like the 3d worlds and the challenge of exploration; non-game-players like the personal contact with real people. Everyone appreciates the breadth and variety presented by these virtual experiences. The development of further worlds is planned. The project raised many issues around the key learning objectives and the effectiveness of the media in achieving these within the cost constraints imposed. Further testing and research is planned, to look at the optimal use and effectiveness of this technology within learning and teaching.