Transforming Education with VR: Insights from Evan Sitler

I love opening the minds of those I connect with to the possibilities of Extended Reality (XR). Through seeing the industry grow over the past 6 years I understand how XR technology will soon impact every aspect of the world we interact with. From how we experience entertainment and news to how we learn and communicate.

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Evan Sitler: Hi, Evan Sitler Bates. Am I right?

Host: You're right, yeah. Yeah, how are you doing today?

Evan Sitler: Good, good. How are you? How you doing?

Host: I'm alright. Happy New Year!

Evan Sitler: Yeah, happy New Year! Glad to be connected in this new year. Exciting year. Did you do any promises that you're absolutely sure you're gonna keep? Any New Year's resolutions?

Host: One big one. Building a bus. So I'm, in the next couple of months, I'm buying a short bus and converting it into a traveling podcast studio and VR demo space. And I'm gonna go across North America to different schools with that bus, so yeah, pretty big commitment I guess.

Host: That's a very, very cool project, I have to say.

Evan Sitler: Thank you, thank you. Yeah.

Host: Okay, so how did you do the research for that? How did that, you know, how did that start going forward? Like I understand why you would do it, but why would you want to? There's easier ways than building the bus.

Evan Sitler: Yeah, like obviously, well, I'm buying a bus and converting it, but yeah, like research, I've been looking into it for a while just because I'm interested in traveling. And then kind of in looking into it, I was looking into smaller vans, and then talking to my business partner, we’re kind of like, well, if I got a bigger bus, I could have a full VR demo space. And then we could brand it and use it as kind of a sales tool for our business as well. So yeah, just started watching a lot of YouTube videos, TikToks, and yeah, kind of have a plan now, I don’t know how to deck out buses.

Host: Okay. I also have both my—my mom and stepdad, they renovated houses the whole time I was growing up, so I got quite a bit of knowledge and help from them. So, have you ever thought of being in one of those, like TV shows like RV rentals and stuff like that? They could be renovating everything these days.

Evan Sitler: Yeah, right, and then you could just... you'll be, you know, talking about advertising your business.

Host: Yeah, that's a really good point. You know? Yeah, definitely do that.

Evan Sitler: Yeah.

Host: And you said you're gonna use this to go from school to school and talk about VR. When do you want to start this, by the way?

Evan Sitler: Oh, whatever. Yeah, I don’t know if I didn't know if you were just demonstrating.

Host: No, no, I mean, when do you want to start, uh, traveling?

Evan Sitler: When is the end of this project?

Host: Yeah, so end of June, I want to head out. So, yeah, my birthday is in June. There's a big Tech Conference in Toronto in June called Collision. So hoping to go to that, but as well possibly have the bus involved with Collision because the incubator that we're a part of is a big sponsor of the conference. So yeah, end of June, want to have it done, hopefully go to Collision, and then head out on the road, probably West Canada up to the Yukon and then down the West Coast as it starts getting cold. And you're going to be going from school to school promoting VR, you said, right?

Evan Sitler: Exactly.

Host: Exactly. Yeah. So I guess to give some background, maybe, uh, my company, Expert VR, we create virtual reality simulations for training purposes. So we work with all kinds of different school programs, from police and firefighters to counseling to pharmaceuticals, um, in training all kinds of different things and skills that people need to do in the real world. So we're giving them that hands-on learning, so being able to demo that as we go across Canada and North America.

Host: Okay, that's really cool. So one thing is, uh, could you explain, you know, I have it here on your website, XR. Could you talk a little bit about that? What XR is?

Evan Sitler: Yeah, for sure. So, like, XR stands for extended reality. Um, and basically it's just the combination of virtual reality, mixed reality, and augmented reality. It's trying to kind of put everything under one term. So for anybody that's listening that's not familiar, virtual reality is, uh, you're completely immersed in the virtual world. You're putting on a headset, and all you can see is virtual. Augmented reality, or the way most people explain it, is you can see something in—Front of you but you can't necessarily interact with it, so let's say maybe Pokémon Go—you can kind of see the Pokémon there, but there's not much you can really do. You can't pick it up or do anything with it. Whereas then mixed reality is that next level where you can add that real-world physics and interact with things. So XR is kind of all three of those in one.

Host: How do you exactly make that possible? So if I'm under VR?

Evan Sitler: Yeah, so VR augments your reality or argument to reality, arguments your reality, so you see things, right? So then you also have to not only be able to project reality in the pseudo-3D way but you also have to have that real—have some way of sensing human action and then have your technology also react to that, right? So the way we have it right now is with, you know, the glasses and the different versions and solutions to that. 

Host: But then are you going to have that on those glasses as well? Is that an external unit that is going to actually sense human motion?

Evan Sitler: No, so it's all built into the glasses. Depending on what type of things we're trying to sense, we might add other, like gloves as accessories so we can track your hands better or there's like face tracking devices. But for example, this headset right beside me is the Quest Pro by Meta or Facebook, and it has eye tracking and face tracking built into it as well as controllers. So you can go into that headset and you don't need any computer. You don't need anything. You just put on the headset and now you're either in the fully virtual world or you can click a button and now you can see the real world, and you can layer that augmented world on top of it.

Host: I want to move back a little bit and talk about why you even got into this in the first place. It's very cool to get into virtual reality, but it probably wasn't always that way. It was probably something that may happen, but now it's all of a sudden something that probably will happen. Could you talk about your journey moving into this? Like how did you get into the space in the first place?

Evan Sitler: Yeah, so I guess to take even a step back from that, I was part of Junior Achievement going through high school. They're like an organization for entrepreneurs in high school, and you get together after high school and start a business and run it. And being part of that program, I got to tour Communitech, it's one of the bigger incubators here in Kitchener-Waterloo, and Google used to have their office right above Communitech, and Communitech's actually taking over that space now. But in the tour, I got to go to Google and I got to see all of these startups that were in Communitech, and one of the startups was this cave where they had all these projectors in this cave, and you put on the special pair of glasses that tracked your head, and with the projectors, they could change the environment based off of your head motion and position. That was kind of like my first foray into seeing virtual reality, and I was probably 14, 15 years old when I saw virtual reality and was like, "Oh, this is really cool." Obviously, it's super expensive—like millions of dollars to have that set up—but I remember talking to my dad, and he was talking like, "Oh, what if you could have a full suit that tracks every part of your body?"

Fast forward 10 or so years from then, 2016, I’m in my third year of university, not really doing too much with my life in university or going to too many classes, if I’m being honest, and decided I should probably get more involved and do something with this experience or this opportunity I have. So I got involved in a bunch of clubs, and one of those was the incubator on campus, Biolink. So walking in there, I met who's now my business partner, Drew McNeil, and he was the ambassador of Biolink for that year. And so I walked in, he gave me a tour, showed me the space, and in doing the tour, I was so ready to start this t-shirt company where I was gonna make custom t-shirts and sell them, and then we get to the end of the tour, and Drew's making custom t-shirts as his business out of the incubator, and I was like, "Well, I can't copy this guy." So my second idea was to buy a 360 video camera because I loved YouTube videos of Casey Neistat and Just for Louie and different people that were creating these 360 videos that showed the full world, and you could look around, and you could explore New York with Casey Neistat or the world with these traveling YouTubers. So buying that then led to buying a VR headset with Drew and convincing him to do that and needing to make money back. And in doing that, we were doing all these free demos, and eventually, this—our first mentor, not a mentor at the time—came up and was like, "This is really cool technology for gaming, but I do," or she did leadership training, and she's like, "How could this be used in a training sense?" There were these speech training simulations in VR as well as some team-building games. One we play a lot is "Keep Talking and Nobody explodes and basically you're one person's in a headset and there's a bomb in front of them and then everyone outside of the headset has the instructions on how to defuse the bomb. So we started going to these leadership sessions where that would kind of be the break for the day and you'd have this like communicative leadership testing simulation.

And that showed us how it could be used for education. That's quite the history that you gave me, right? So if I was gonna think about it, it would be, you know, you got into entrepreneurship and you saw something really cool, right? Which was the 360 experience. It was being promoted a little bit on some of the media channels that you frequented, like Casey Neistat and things of that nature. And looking into that, you said, "Hey, look, I want to get more involved." And what was printing t-shirts, which I think was a good idea that you didn't go in that direction.

Host: I agree because I think this gives a little bit more to the world, yes? And so you met someone in a leadership conference and that person put a bomb in front of you and told you to keep speaking until, you know, you can defuse the bomb. So that's where I want to talk about a little bit. So where did you, what did you learn there? So what happened there specifically and what did you learn there in that leadership conference? Because I'm sure that really, I think that put the, um, that closed the lid on what all the things you needed to actually move to the next step.

Evan Sitler: Yeah, so actually I wasn't at the leadership conference. It was just going on at Brock University and we had been doing all these like VR setups where we'd just set up in a random hallway and any student that walks by, we're like, "Hey, jump into VR. We want to show off this cool technology."

Host: And this is for your team that you were part of, right?

Evan Sitler: Oh yeah, it was just me and Drew and we were, it was just like, it's just both you guys?

Host: Yeah, just the two of us. And we had just started this company and bought the headset kind of for fun and then we're like, "We need to start making money back on it." And we're like, "How about we just start showing it to anybody that wants to listen?"

Host: Yeah, yeah, so what made it a company? Just bought a headset? Um, so where’s your mentality there?

Evan Sitler: Yeah, so we were shooting 360 videos a little bit at the time. So, uh, with our 360 camera I bought, we were going out to Niagara Falls, tourism, Brock University, all the wineries, and we shot all kinds of different videos, like marketing videos for them. That gave us a little bit of money. We still had to put in our own money to buy the VR headset and computer and everything.

And so that's when we're like, well, maybe this is a different business avenue that we can look into and set up. And in doing so, we were just doing these free setups for students at Brock University and this leadership conference or class was going on.

And Rashmi and Rick, they’re our mentors now and they run a leadership consulting firm called Lake and Associates. They were contracted by Brock to do one of these classes and they walked out of the class and, pure luck, we were set up right outside of the class and they came over just seeing all these students playing in VR. And that's when they asked, "How could this be used in a leadership or training sense?"

And we looked through all the games we had. This is how Will Smith got Fresh Prince, by the way. He was standing outside a recording studio or something and someone picked him up, so...

Host: Yeah, yeah. Hopefully, you have the same first 20 years, hopefully.

Evan Sitler: Yeah, I was reading his biography not too long ago and yeah, it would be nice to have that connection.

Host: Your future mentors came in, saw what you were doing, picked you up, right, and then just continued from there. So what happened?

Evan Sitler: They thought the technology was cool but they're like, this is just for gaming. How could it be used for more than that, in other industries or in other aspects? And because they were doing leadership training, we looked around at some of the things that are out there. At that point, we couldn't develop our own simulations, but we were like, well, there's some games out there that could apply to leadership.

So that's where the "Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes" bomb defusal game comes in. We found that game and we’re like, "Presented it to them," and they’re like, "This is perfect. We can have one of our participants go in and then the rest of their team have to communicate with them and use their leadership skills and all the skills that they're teaching and all the communicative skills that they're teaching to defuse that bomb."

Host: So how does that, how does that game work and why does virtual reality assist in making that game work?

Evan Sitler: Yeah, so in the game, there's a bomb in front of you and there's all these different like modules, kind of like, there's wires or there's Simon Says. So it's like blue, yellow, green, and whatever, four colored buttons. So it will like do a pattern and you have to do the pattern back and things like that. Um, so yeah, just a fun game in that way.

 And then so you see that in VR, but then because you're in the headset only. You can see the bomb and it immerses you in that space, so it gets kind of stressful. There's a timer going saying you only have five minutes until this bomb's going to explode, and then outside of the bomb, there's this manual. It's like a 24-page manual of all the different modules that could pop up and how to diffuse them. And so, you're in the headset, have to communicate what you're seeing, and then your team outside of the headset has to look through that manual and try and understand what you're saying so that they choose the right page and can give you the instructions on how to diffuse the bomb and get out of there in five minutes. That's a really good sort of way of making that training really mean something. I think that's really cool, you know?

Evan Sitler: Yeah, I'll give you that. It's beautiful. So, okay, so you had that, and at that time, you said you weren't able to make your simulations, right?

Host: Yes.

Evan Sitler: But was it something that happened when they engaged with you? You started making simulations, or was this an already existing simulation that you brought in and were able to facilitate these?

Host: Exactly. So, we just started finding games like that or other third-party apps that we could use. But it put that thought in our brain or planted that seed that we needed to look at how we could develop these simulations so that we could scale our business, but as well just like provide custom things that our clients needed. But Drew and I are both business majors and have no coding skills at all, so that wasn't possible back in 2016-2017 when we were doing that.

Evan Sitler:I think that gave you that nugget of teaching, is what I'm getting, where you had that little experience of what it's like to leverage technology to educate. And then at that time, from what I'm understanding, you then needed to figure out a way to actually, you know, be creative in that space, create your own things, and then use that, you know, to teach others or teach things that you're interested in teaching or allow others to be able to create things that allow them to teach things that they want to teach. So, how did you make that journey? How did you make that leap?

Yeah, so it was a bit of a journey. Like I said, 2016 is when we first started the VR company. 2017 is when Expert VR was formed as it is today. It wasn't until 2019 when we'd kind of saved up some money through doing all kinds of random gigs. Drew and I were both working either part-time or full-time during that time as well, and in 2019, I think it was our third or fourth time entering into the big pitch competition that Brock University does every year, Monster Pitch. And it's kind of based off of Dragon's Den or Shark Tank, and they actually bring in Jim Trueliving and Bruce Croxton. Usually, Bruce Croxton was there when we pitched. And so, we got in. Like I said, we'd applied three or four times before that, made it to the semi-finals or whatever, but we finally got in. We had some pretty tough competition, but in the end, we won both the judge's choice and the audience choice. And that gave us the funding to hire a person for four months. That's all we had. We're like, okay, we're hiring you for four months, and we have to build some great simulations. If they're successful, we can keep you on, and if not, then we're done. Along the way, we saw the potential of VR learning and how it could revolutionize education. We began to incorporate VR learning elements into our simulations, and that made a significant impact on how users engaged with the content.

Host: What were your first simulations that you built?

Evan Sitler: Yeah, so we started off kind of actually in the consumer behavior type space. We'd, over those years, been doing the training and leadership skills still, but we saw that there was a lot of interest in how we could track people's eyes and movements and sometimes emotions as they go through a store or different environments. So, we started doing all these research simulations where our first ones were creating a bank. So, one of the top five banks in Canada, we worked with them to design a new bank layout and what a new teller system may look like, and then we had people go through that and were able to track their eyes so we knew where they were looking, what path they took throughout there, and just making sure that everything was set up to be optimal for that customer experience. And then kind of similarly, one of our next simulations in the first couple was on the academic research side of things. So, we built a future ocean life simulation where we could look at what made the ocean look like in 2050. And we could look at the utopian future and the dystopian future and then compare how that affected people's emotions. What were the parameters affecting the generation of those simulations, both in a positive and negative side, but both dystopian and utopian for that particular piece?

Host: For that one?

Evan Sitler: Yeah, so we worked with a researcher at Brock University who has done a lot of research into what ocean life may look like in the future, and it was mainly around overfishing and pollution, like garbage pollution in the ocean, and around. Laws could change over the next 30 or so years to change what ocean life may look like. So, in the dystopian future, you were allowed to fish as many fish as you wanted, and we had these huge fishing trawlers with big nets that went on for miles. And then in the utopian, we have garbage in the water and everything. In the dystopian, and then as well in the utopian, you're on a small fishing boat that's just kind of like a family-owned thing, and they're fishing what they need to survive and help their community. The oceans are cleaned up because there's no garbage and everything, and things along those lines.

Evan Sitler: Were these mostly like presentations? So, you would basically immerse yourself in one world or the other?

Host: Exactly, yeah. So we had it narrated, and you put on the headset, and you're looking around. There were a couple of interactions, but mostly an experience that you're going through. But it would be great if we could have it so you could like rotate through the laws so you see which law, if enacted first, would reduce the amount of pollution in the shortest amount of time. So you could say, "Hey, it'll be mostly clean if we get these three laws passed, and then the next seven will do the rest of the job for us." But we can get it mostly done in these three laws.

Evan Sitler: Right, right. That is interesting. I've actually been talking with the researcher about extending that research, so I'll bring that up to her.

Host: That's an interesting point. Was this all still in the first four months, or was this—you know, you got to stay alive that first four months? Those must have been really stressful. How did that feel?

Uh, like because you kind of had no control, because you weren't really the one doing the text, so you're just hovering out with this person's shoulder, encouraging them to keep your company afloat?

Evan Sitler:  Yeah, it was stressful, and not like it was kind of... Drew and I had been in that position for three years where we were working part-time jobs or full-time jobs, so we were kind of like, well, if it doesn't work out, this guy still—it was Josh, who is now our CTO. He was still a student at the time, or like, he has something to fall back on, he's fine. So, we weren't too worried there. It was mainly just worried about like, one, pleasing the client and making sure that we did have a good simulation just to show off, even if we didn't make that much money or lock in another contract. It's like, as long as we have something, the demo, moving forward.

Evan Sitler: So, that was a big part. And then I think as well, Josh being our first employee and our office was our living room, so he's coming over and sitting in our living room every morning. So, it was just—that was kind of nerve-wracking, having that first employee.

Host: Well, kudos to Josh for believing you guys and, you know, coming over really—

Evan Sitler: Oh, for sure, yeah. I know, yeah. Last year, we had our—our team retreat every winter, and last year, 2021, we fully acknowledged Josh as a co-founder.

Host: 2022 now?

Evan Sitler: No, yeah, so it was 2021, that winter, that we—

Host: Right, right. Okay, so you survived your first four months. It looks like you were able to secure a few more contracts. Congrats on that.

Evan Sitler: Thank you.

Host: So, right now, your company seems fully focused on education. So, I got a little pieces of sort of how that started with you, with some of the leadership and things like that, but then, what ended up happening? What made you feel like, "Hey, this market really needs what I'm about to provide and can really accelerate the way that young people engage with knowledge and are unable to sort of retain it as well"?

Evan Sitler: Yeah, I wish I could say it was like some idealistic, like, "We wanted to help kids have better education." That's definitely where we are right now. Like, our vision today is to make—or to collaboratively make education more accessible, engaging, and impactful, and that's what our whole company is striving towards. But back when the kind of pivot happened, it was COVID-19.

So, we were doing these research studies, and all of them had a headset set up at some lab, some location, and then people would come in. We'd have hundreds of participants go through these VR headsets and collect all the data that we needed, whether we were doing academic research or consumer. And so, we had a bunch of those lined up at the start of 2020. COVID-19 happened, and obviously, you can't have people coming in, sharing a headset. It was a stressful four or so months there where we had—including ourselves—we had five employees or six employees at the time and some co-op students lined up for the summer and didn't really know what we were going to do. Then, all these schools, like, I would say around late April, early May, started reaching out and they're like, "Hey, all of our students are at home. We can't provide our co-op that we normally provide. We can't provide them with all of the labs that we normally have on campus. All they have is their computer, and we can send out technology to them," and we're like, "Yeah, we have this VR headset that is completely wireless you can mail it out to students and they can put the VR headset on at home and go into your lab environments into a realistic environment anything that you need them to train on." In setting that up, that kind of pivoted our business and now opened our eyes to how VR learning could be used for education. This was a game-changer in terms of applying VR learning beyond traditional research into the realm of virtual classrooms, providing immersive, scalable education solutions for students in remote environments.

Evan Sitler: So what have you learned with that? So we're, you know, sort of whatever the new things you've picked up as you get deeper into that market in terms of how what interests you most is like how exactly do students learn in this environment, you know, how does it change, how does the engagement improve?

Evan Sitler: Right, because you know, there are simulations of already existing environments and then there's some if you're a living biology class, you're immersed in the Amazon, it's a whole different experience and this whole different attachment to the knowledge, right? Than asking you, you know, drawing a cell becomes a different thing.

Evan Sitler: Yeah, because a lot of there's a lot of things you can really do. Yeah, you can even jump. I love the audio stories, right? Stand beside a cell or...

Host: Yeah, exactly, yeah.

Evan Sitler: Magnet School Bus, the whole thing.

Host: Exactly. Exactly. Part of the idea for the bus that I was talking about, but to throw out some stats I like to reference the study that was done by PWC and they compared students in a regular classroom to students in a virtual reality classroom and the four main stats that they normally reference or that I normally reference as well is that it was four times faster for students to learn inside of the virtual environment.

Evan Sitler: They were four times more focused, they were 275 percent more confident coming out of that experience ready to enter the real world and they had 3.75 times more emotional connection to the content that they were going through.

Host: And so I think the confidence that is very important across the board but especially in anything where your safety could be at risk whether you're a firefighter, a police officer, or in the trades, and then the emotional side of things is very important for any soft skills again for police officers dealing with de-escalating different sorts of situations or even if you're just like a salesperson and you need to have conversations being able to practice what types of customer may come in, what types of mental health you may be dealing with as a police officer, all these different things having that confidence and having that emotional connection is very important.

Evan Sitler: Have you been able to, I guess this is now learning in general, so you've clearly started branching out outside of just students and, you know, just generally teaching professionals how to engage in the real world in the maximally like sort of either efficient way or proper way?

Host: So, as that has that journey started for you guys?

Evan Sitler: We're still mostly in the school space and it's an area that I think we kind of want to stay in for the most part because it's, yeah, it's an area that I think a lot of companies, especially in VR today, kind of don't look at because it's a lot of work to get trusted by a school and to get access to their budget to build simulations. We spend, like, sometimes up to some of these customers we have, it was three years ago that we started conversations with them, and now we're starting to work with them today. Usually, it's six months to a year, but sometimes up to three years. So, it's very hard to lock that in versus an Enterprise client; you can probably go and get a pilot, and if it goes successful, it goes well. But we just, I think, a lot of us at Expert VR, including myself, didn't have the greatest education experience or saw where it could be improved. And so, in building these simulations, we don't want to do it just as a company, we want to work with schools, we want to work with other industry partners, where we're finding out what is going to be best for VR learning in the future. Through collaboration, we aim to create immersive environments that enhance learning, offering real-world solutions to engage students in ways traditional methods might not. It’s these kinds of VR learning experiences that allow us to push the boundaries of education technology and improve the classroom experience

And for me, like I just didn't enjoy school that much but then when I look at somebody that may have some sort of disability or something that's even more prohibiting what they can do at school or they're not in a place where they can go to the best school or get the best educators in the world.

Or they're just not remembering what they're learning and it's not actually having an impact because they don't learn from reading, they need to actually do the actions to learn from it. All of those problems can be solved through virtual reality.

Obviously, the accessibility parts are a little more difficult with technology being expensive but the way I like to look at it is when you go into University you have to buy all these textbooks and they cost hundreds of dollars each. If we can get all that content into a VR headset that costs five hundred dollars, then that's no longer an issue of the accessibility of price and things along those lines. In my mind, there are two different things going on. There's the sort of like condensation of content into simulations in general for different kinds of problems, for different kinds of problems in the sense that there are different kinds of ways of teaching and the subjects to teach. So those are problems turning those into simulations. There's a problem of making them, making history and experiences a problem. And then the second part of it is also reducing the cost of the actual headset. So how are you guys attacking both of those things?

Host: You know, and to what degree does your company have control over that?

Evan Sitler: We're mostly on the software side of things. We have little control on the hardware, obviously, those are the big companies like Facebook or Meta, HTC, Pico, REO. They're kind of the top four in the space. That said, we have connections with all of them, so we have regular conversations with all of them trying to... mostly what we're trying to do is making partnerships in the education space. So instead of trying to influence their technology, we trust that they're trying to build the best VR technology that they can. So we're more sitting down with them to be like, how can we bring five schools to you that each need 100 headsets, and then you can give them some sort of discount? Or how can we get some more educational pricing out there so that more students have access to this technology? A key part of these efforts is identifying VR learning opportunities that can benefit students directly. By leveraging VR learning technologies, we're hoping to enhance the classroom experience, making it more immersive and accessible to a wider range of learners. I think a lot of that comes from looking at how Apple really took off back in the day and got into all the schools. And now you walk into any university and everyone's using MacBooks.

So that's on the hardware side, and then the software side, it's really just us building our simulations like we normally have, but then as well looking at new avenues for partnership and for collaboration. So we have our normal way of doing contracts where we go in, a school pays us, we build a simulation, they have the simulation they need, and we're good to go. But what we're starting to look at now, and we started doing with a couple schools, is either a collaborative partnership or a co-op project. So in a collaborative partnership, we're working one-on-one with that school. And once we build a simulation, they still own the rights to it, but then they license it to us so that we can sell it as a product. This model promotes engagement in education, encouraging schools to take an active role in creating educational resources. So now we go to the next school, and the example that we're doing right now is we built out a firefighting simulation, or three firefighting simulations, with Conestoga College, and they've licensed it to us so we can go to other fire departments or go to fire departments and sell it to them. This approach is an example of how VR in education is evolving, allowing multiple schools to share and benefit from the same simulation, scaling the technology’s impact. And so now they're making some revenue back on that and probably paying for the next simulation that we're going to build for them. The goal is to create personalized learning experiences that cater to the specific needs of each school or organization, making the learning process more relevant and targeted. And we now have a product that we can sell, incorporating active learning strategies that keep students engaged and immersed in their training. This collaboration results in immersive learning experiences that have a real-world impact on training and education.

Evan Sitler: And then the second aspect of what we're looking at on the collaborative partnership side of things is co-op projects where something I think we've seen done in some industries but haven't really seen done in the education industry because lots of educators are siloed and don't like to work together, particularly or schools don't like to work together, particularly. And so we're trying to build this co-op project where we go to five different schools or whatever number of schools, but we're looking at five. Go to five schools that all need the same simulation. So let's say it's equity, diversity, and inclusion training, something that's being popular and what we've been developing lately. We go to these schools, they all need that training. Why would we build that five different times when we could all come together and they each put in ten thousand dollars and we put in fifty thousand dollars as Expert VR? Now we have a pool of a hundred thousand dollars. We can build a great simulation at cost. Now they have unlimited licenses because they funded that project, and now we have a product that we can go out and sell to other schools. This collaborative approach is an example of engagement in education that fosters cooperation and resource-sharing. And it's like a win-win-win across the board. So we're starting to look into those types of ways that we can influence the software side even more. These kinds of partnerships are a great opportunity for VR in education, allowing institutions to benefit from cutting-edge simulations that can be scaled across different learning environments. The collaboration also promotes personalized learning experiences that cater to each school's unique needs while addressing broader educational goals. By leveraging these co-op projects, we can incorporate active learning strategies into the design of simulations that make learning more interactive and hands-on. Ultimately, we aim to create immersive learning experiences that engage students in new ways, making their education both dynamic and impactful.

Host: Part of what I'm hearing is you're still able to basically touch a lot of different sectors just because you're in education, right? To firefighting, police, that's just, you know, where exactly you're actually giving the education. It allows you to touch that. If you're doing a college or university on and on and on, and then you just do these partnerships and make that really possible for you.

Evan Sitler: Exactly, yeah. We've built out these tools in-house where it's very easy for us to create all kinds of different scenarios in different industries. We kind of just have to change the art, and that leads us all the way back to, you know, getting a bus and going around, going around Canada.

Host: Yes, and going from school to school on your Magic School Bus.

Evan Sitler: Exactly, and reaching out and...

Host: Okay, and that's the reason why you're doing this. That's really cool. Okay, so where are you gonna go first?

Evan Sitler: Yeah, I don't quite know. I think, obviously, I want to get in...

Host: You gotta tell them because if they listen to this podcast, you're the first. You know, you're the, you go to them first, they'll be waiting for you for sure. For sure. Well, so we're actually looking at launching this marketing campaign where we kind of want to make it almost like a, a Music Tour kind of thing—like a North America Tour, where we have like, here's the dates that we're gonna be coming to these locations.

Evan Sitler: But we want to get the community and those online more involved, so like I said, the basic path, and I know there's some things I want to see along the way, so I'm going to start planning the road a little bit more is starting in Toronto at Collision and then heading out to the west coast up to the Yukon and then down the west coast and then I'll see where I go through the States from there.

Host: But having that basic route, are there any schools you're talking to right now that you might be able to go to first, or are you still building that out, building that pathway in?

Evan Sitler: Yeah, there's a lot of, or a couple of schools and a lot of fire departments that we're talking to out in BC. Our new sales person that came on about a month ago was out in BC, so he's been making a lot of connections out there. There's a couple of really cool VR schools that are using VR in Alberta, so definitely want to stop into those as well.

But we kind of want to use the community to be like, um, vote for your school, or like we haven't set it up completely yet but over the next couple of months we'll have this marketing campaign going where people can go on and get us to come to their school and it kind of gets people more involved, have some rewards for people that are ambassadors to get us to come to the school and things along those lines. 

Host: So make it a little bit community-driven, basically.

Evan Sitler: Exactly. I'd love to talk about the industry in general, VR. We've had, um, you know, obviously Lucky and, you know, his company got bought out. Um, the man for the audience, the guy who created Oculus, Thrift, his company got bought out for a billion dollars and Meta is trying to push that narrative forward and obviously with Meta trying to really double down in making, uh, this technology something that is, is the new interface for, for information in general and pushing that initiative forward and they've taken their flag for it and things of that nature.

And I'm sure you're, uh, sort of, you're definitely going to be pro VR, but could you like just tell the audience sort of where you see this going and so creative vision for the future about where what this technology can do since you're, uh, very much hands-on on the ground, whether the market makes the decision in this direction or not. If they do make a decision, what is kind of the world going to look like? Because you've really seen like what others haven't seen, which is sort of how unique interactions with this technology, right? Like what, you know, the idea that there's higher levels of retention for, for students when, you know, their sensory input is a lot larger for them makes a lot of sense and, you know, like anybody else, when you completely immerse yourself in something, you feel it in every, you know, in every input a human can have.

Host: But what are some of the other things you've seen in some of the other places where you're like, I didn't even know that we could, we could squash the time down for this to such a low amount, because, because we have so much input for this person, they're very quickly able to absorb something or, you know, just talk a little bit about that, sort of where you see the future going. Yeah, based on your experience.

Evan Sitler: Yeah, I guess to start on like some of those examples, like squashing time down and things along those lines that are possible and happening today, so they're only going to get better into the future. Um, I think a great example is, uh, Vario is the leading headset for anybody in like the Enterprise space. It costs six thousand dollars for the headset, so it's not a consumer-ready one, but with that headset, um, Vario partnered with the EU, um, or in some way, uh, to get their headset and a simulation that goes in their headset, licensed, that you can get your full helicopter license in virtual reality.

So in Europe, you can put on a VR headset, it has to have this like special device where you can like have some of the controls and everything, but you go to this place and you, you never leave the ground and you can get your full helicopter license inside of this headset. So, wow, like look, and that's happening today. That's happening today. It was like a year, year and a half ago when they're all licensed, so it's, it's out there and you can do it today.

And it's to think of in the education space, that amazes me where somebody could have the Sphere headset at home and they've always dreamed about being a helicopter pilot or they've always dreamed about X, Y or Z career path and they've never had the, the money to, to go and do it or the time to go and do it and now it's like, hey, I have a VR headset at home every day. I can get that maybe hour in or half an hour in, whatever you can spare, and over a year, over a few years, however long it takes you, you can get your full helicopter license or whatever it is at home and then you're ready to go and apply for a job.

So being able to like have those skills available in the home, I think is, is really interesting for where the future may go for people wanting to switch careers or just pick up a new skill because it could even be something as small as, "Oh, my engine broke down and I don't have money to go to a mechanic," and it's like, "Alright, put on the headset and we're going to walk you through the steps of fixing your engine." That one might be a little more complicated, but it's a possible example.

Um, so yeah, that's where, like, I'm really cool with use cases of how VR is being used today. Where I see it heading, and it's going to be interesting over the next year or so, is CES is going on right now in Las Vegas, and a bunch of new headsets were released. Apple—there's been a lot of leaks, and I don't like to talk about it too much because there's kind of leaks every year—but it looks like they're getting closer and closer to releasing their headset. One of the main specs there, and the mock-ups that you can see online, are like pretty close to a pair of glasses. Right beside me, I have HTC's headset. This is just a pair of glasses, and their latest one that they released, you can take off these arms and put a battery pack on the back so it's more powerful. So, looking at Apple and releasing their headset and knowing that they want to have something that is ready for consumers and is going to impress people, it's going to be a pair of glasses that you put on, you're in the real world, and you can see the real world through the glasses. Then, you can turn on your augmented mode, and now you can be standing in front of your car and the augmented mode is walking you through how to work on your engine. And then, you don't want to make a mistake, so you click another button, and now you're in a fully virtual world with a virtual engine, and you can practice the steps you need to do three or four times until you're confident. This kind of technology will foster immersive learning experiences that let users interact with both the real and virtual worlds. You switch that off, now you're back in the real world with the augmented directions, and then you're done with that. This aligns perfectly with growing trends in VR in education, where learners can experience hands-on lessons and active learning strategies that enhance their skills through repetition and engagement. You switch it off, you're just wearing regular glasses, and the transition from immersive to practical is a great example of personalized learning experiences in action, allowing each person to tailor the experience to their needs.

Host: How fast have you seen the size of these, uh, the technology going down? 

Evan Sitler:So with microchips, it was, you know, like 18 months. How fast have you seen, like, the size of VR headsets, so to be getting reduced, right? Because that, I think, would be—it's really interesting to think about. So we can plan, say, five years from now, you're going to be wearing contacts that can give you virtual reality. That's a bit too much, but there is a company, Mojo Vision, that has developed contacts. They do work, obviously. There's only one set in the world, and it's like very R&D prototype right now, but right, they're out there, and, like, people are trying them on and everything. So yeah, it's coming. 

Host: If you can do Fusion, you can do VR.

Evan Sitler: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But yeah, yeah, I know. The size of VR is being insane. Like, I think it can kind of be hard for people to see because the headsets might look pretty similar. Uh, I wish I had an older headset right beside me so I could show the comparison, but they're pretty similar in size. Like, it's coming down. This HTC Flow—this one can only really play 360 videos or basic experiences, so I'm very curious to see the new headset and what that will be able to provide. But the real size decrease that people don't see is on the back end. So, like this headset, the Oculus Quest Pro, Meta's newest headset—you can take it anywhere. It's completely wireless. All I need—well, technically, I don't need these controllers because it has hand tracking, but if you want better tracking, you bring the controllers. So that's all you need to carry around. You're good to go, and you can set that up in a park. You can set that up at your friend's house. You're good to go. This shift to wireless headsets is revolutionizing VR in education, where students can experience immersive learning experiences without being tethered to a computer. Whereas beforehand, when we got in in 2016, and really up until the first standalone headset from Oculus came out a few years ago, you needed a huge computer. I'm looking at the huge one beside me. You needed these base stations, which were basically two cameras that you had to screw into your wall, into corners of the wall, or put up on light stands, and those needed to be plugged in. The headset needed to be plugged into the computer. So you had this wire that was attached to your head when you were interacting with things. This limitation has now been overcome, allowing for greater engagement in education by offering learners new ways to interact with their content. And that came out in 2016. And now, it was 2019, I believe, or 2020, when the wireless version of the standalone headset came out. So that was three years—only three years of progression. We took out all of that extra stuff that we needed. So, yeah, amazing. This progress aligns with growing interest in personalized learning experiences, where the technology adapts to each learner’s needs.

Host: Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing all this information with us. I mean, I'm really looking forward to seeing how this goes and how your company goes, and obviously, enjoy the road trip and all the things that you're doing. So, where can people find you? If they wanted to reach out or anything like that, where would they be able to reach out to you?

Evan Sitler: Yeah, LinkedIn is probably where I'm most active. Search for Evan Sitler Bates on LinkedIn, and yeah, you'll see a picture of me. And if you don't remember the name for sure, it's talking about VR and Web3 and everything in my bio, so you'll see that. Um, other than that, if you check out our website expertvr.ca or.com, um, you can check out all these case studies that I'm talking about, all these blogs we're releasing every week, and all kinds of knowledge about VR and AR and the industry in general.

Host: Well, thank you so much for coming on and, uh, joining the RH podcast and, uh, have a great day.

Evan Sitler: Yeah, thank you so much for having me on, and maybe I'll have to have you on the bus when it gets ready.

Host: I'm going, I'm coming on the bus whether you like it or not.

Evan Sitler: Love it, love it. I want to see that.

Host: Awesome, take care.

Evan Sitler: Take care.

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