Overview
The Monterey Bay Aquarium is renowned for its commitment to marine education, inspiring visitors of all ages to care for the ocean and its inhabitants. In 2019, the Bechtel Family Center for Ocean Education and Leadership opened its doors, expanding the aquarium’s educational programs for kids.
Located two blocks from the aquarium itself, the Bechtel Center faced a unique challenge—how to bring the immersive experience of the aquarium to students in the Bechtel Center. Athena Barrios, the Digital Learning Manager at Monterey Bay Aquarium, found the perfect solution with virtual reality (VR) for education.
VR at Monterey Bay Aquarium
The VR experience is part of a lab focused on raising awareness and empathy for the creatures of the sea, no matter how small. Using curated 360 videos filmed in the Monterey Bay, students enter the immersive world of either the Kelp Forest or the Rocky Shores from the point of view of animals like crabs, snails, and fish.
The in-headset experiences are limited to 60-90 seconds and set the stage for the rest of the labs, which are focused on learning how these animals adapt to survive in their environment. The labs serve up to 3,000 students a year.
From their start in 2019, the labs used devices purchased through an out-of-the-box VR company who provides virtual reality education solutions for the classroom. “They met the needs we had at the time,” says Athena.
However, as time went on, this solution proved to be limited when it came to flexibility and ease of use. “It was difficult to get the videos on there, troubleshooting them, and seeing just all the health of the headsets at once. I wanted more people on my team to be able to do that, not just me.” As Athena spent more time with VR, she was eager to find a management solution that was more user-friendly and offered additional management visibility.
Opportunity for an Upgrade
The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the VR program at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The program was put on pause when the aquarium closed and there became a need to adapt to new safety measures. The team had to adjust their in-person field trips to operate without VR in order to accommodate the changing circumstances. The headsets sat unused for almost two years.
Additionally, the pandemic resulted in a 60% reduction of staff, many of whom had been trained to use the VR headsets in the classroom. As a result, the team had to train new members on the whole curriculum, with little time to focus on VR. This onboarding process and reduced capacity in the teaching team led to a need for simplifying the instructions for the new team members.
After returning to in-person activities, Athena found herself with outdated headsets, a smaller staff, and less time for training. She knew the VR program had to evolve to meet the needs of this new situation.
The first step was to invest in 150 Pico devices, significantly enhancing the visual quality of the experience. The aquarium produces all its content in stunning 4K and the outdated headsets simply didn’t do it justice. The new devices ensured that students could fully experience the details of the underwater world and be fully immersed.
Not sure what device to use for your deployment? Learn more here.
Elevating the VR Experience with ManageXR
With the new devices procured, the next step was to find a management platform that offered centralized control and visibility. Athena discovered ManageXR, “I signed up for a trial and in a half hour I had 30 headsets on the platform. It was so easy.” With less time to focus on VR during training, having an easy to use platform was essential. Instead of wasting time getting set up or troubleshooting, instructors can simply wake up the headsets and hand them to students to start exploring.
Home Screen
With the ManageXR Custom Home Screen, the VR devices could be configured with the ideal classroom experience in mind. Students would only have one option to choose from rather than have access to social media or the internet by accident. The result? Less time wasted getting the labs set up, more time experiencing the underwater ocean world. And students have more fun being in control of their experience.
Configurations
With configurations, the device experience can be prepared weeks ahead of time and have everything ready for the labs. All the instructors have to do is unplug and wake the headsets up. When different exploration labs happen back to back, all that’s required is to switch the configuration of the devices. “Five minutes is a big deal for us in setup time…we don’t have that much time in between our labs,” Athena says.
Monterey Bay Aquarium also uses configurations to test out different experiences for the labs without disrupting the devices that are in use by students. Test configurations can be identified with a different name and deployed only once they are ready to launch.
User Roles
Previously, only one or two users had access to manage the devices, which often led to delays in setup and troubleshooting. With ManageXR, unlimited users can be added and given user-specific permissions to run the labs.
Final Thoughts
ManageXR provides a seamless and efficient way to deliver VR experiences to young learners at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Monterey Bay Aquarium chose ManageXR because it provides them with the ability to easily manage and customize VR experiences for educational purposes. The platform’s user-friendly interface, allows Athena’s team to efficiently manage multiple headsets, set up different configurations, and customize the home screen – all of which are essential to running a VR program effectively.