By Bella McManus

The virtual reality lab at Casper College is available in the library for students in both individual and class settings. Whether students want to practice their public speaking skills, study math or science, virtually tour art museums around the world, or gain experience as a teacher in a virtual classroom, the VR lab in the Goodstein Foundation Library is available to help. Students can even checkout one of the 25 headsets available and take it home. 

Library Director Katrina Brown said a statewide grant allowed all eight community colleges in Wyoming, as well as the University of Wyoming, to have VR labs on campus. The institutions focused on implementing labs in the nursing departments, as well as more accessible labs in the libraries. The Wyoming Innovation Partnership (WIP) funded the grant, known as Phase II, which the governor put together.

Jonathan Togstad, a work study for the IT help desk, assisted in demoing the lab in its early stages, and he explained that there are two settings for the headsets. One is focused on helping students practice communication and workplace skills such as interviewing, talking to people in the workplace, and public speaking. The other one, he said, consisted more of “prebuilt worlds,” in which students can practice situations involving EMS training, experience history in real time, or answer math and science questions to escape a labyrinth. 

Brown said that they are going to add a career technical education aspect to the VR program in January, which will allow students to practice safety protocols in the workplace. The college plans to increase marketing for the lab at that time, as Brown said only two classes used the headsets this semester.

Brown said that since the headsets are for educational purposes, there is a limit on what apps can be downloaded and used on them, which is called Meta Horizon Management System. 

Brown explained, “As part of the statewide grant, there was a contract with a company that was getting all the headsets put into that HMS for us and supposed to be preloading all the software and doing that.”

The company, called Mace, went bankrupt, and while Brown referred to it as a “hiccup” CC experienced while working out the details of the VR lab, she confirmed via email that there is not currently a third-party company taking Mace’s place, as the HMS is being handled directly by Meta.

“Mace was used in the original provisioning and setup of the new equipment,” her email read.

Chocolate Milk & Donuts, a company that was “helping with the statewide implementation of this whole VR immersive reality project,” according to Brown, helped establish relationships between schools across the state throughout development. When the grant ends, the company will no longer be funded to help Casper College with its new VR lab.

Brown confirmed that the library will be on its own as far as continuing to manage part replacements, software updates, and these intercampus relationships, but the equipment is the college’s to keep.

Going forward, the library hopes to better market the VR lab to students as a great resource for all majors at CC. Brown said the library staff is discussing promoting the technology by setting up a booth in the Union building and allowing students coming in and out for meals to test the equipment and experience the virtual learning environment for themselves.