The Virtual Reality Career Simulator

Career, technical and vocational training could prove to be a much welcome alternative to dysfunctional four-year degree pathways. However, they have chronically suffered from a social and cultural stigma. There is a dire need to reimagine technical education. That’s why we built the Career Simulator for Miami-Dade County Public Schools to allow learners to test-drive different professional futures Technical Colleges can lead to. 

The simulator allows users to embody different avatars we 3D-modeled based on real-world, inspiring and diverse technical college graduates that are working as successful professionals in a variety of fields, while being debt-free. The immersive experience allows learners to experience what a day in the life of a professional feels like through the power of 3D graphics and live action 360° video. 

Learners can thus make more informed decisions about which career path best suits them, as well as clearly see the transformational impact technical education has.

Traditional four-year-degree pathways to employment has failed our generation of learners, as data stemming from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed that nearly 44 percent of recent college graduates were employed in jobs which actually did not require any degrees in 2016. 

On the other side, jobs that require some sort of post-secondary education short of a bachelor’s degree have exploded in recent decades. According to Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, demand for middle-skilled professionals, such as electricians, construction managers, healthcare workers, and mechanics will only increase in the near future. All of the growth of net new good jobs in the non-BA economy has been in middle-skills jobs (Carnevale et al., Good Jobs That Pay without a BA, 2017.)

Career, technical and vocational training could prove to be a much welcome alternative to four-year degree pathways. The problem we are facing is that such pathways to employment are suffering from a social and cultural stigma and a commonly shared perception that they would be reserved for less achieving students. 

There is a dire need to rewire the narrative around career and vocational education and reimagine the transformational power of these technical pathways to employment.

The VR Career Simulator we piloted with Miami-Dade County Technical Colleges allows high school students and adult learners to test-drive various potential inspirational professional futures technical colleges can bring them to. 

The Simulator allows users to embody and identify with different 3D animated avatars we 3D-modeled based on real-world, inspiring and diverse technical college graduates that are currently working as successful professionals in a variety of fields, while being debt-free. 

Through its webVR simulation-based technology, the simulator helps learners visualize the potential impact vocational education can have on their lives, while sparing them from a laborious debt-ridden pathway to employment.

Through its bold game-inspired design and communication style, the simulation allows learners to transform their perception of vocational education and destigmatize it by associating it implicitly with desirable modes of communication and learning. 

The solution is a webVR platform which hosts networked simulations of different career paths that Miami-Dade County Technical Colleges prepare to. The simulator utilizes the complementary technologies of live action 360° video and 3D computer-generated imagery to allow learners to teleport to different work environments and embody professional. The experiences are shared by multiple users, which allows learners to bond with their peers and meet professionals in webVR.

Education data from Miami-Dade County, FL from 2018 shows that 28% of residents only have a high school or GED diploma, with no access to higher education but a dire need for financial freedom. This population would benefit from learning more about vocational education. In this target population, we are most specifically concentrating on individuals, stemming from underserved communities.

We have involved our target population throughout the lifecycle of our creative social problem-solving process. 

• Formulating the problem statement 
• Crowdsourcing real-world and counter-stereotypical success stories 
• Designing the actual experience
• Disseminating the solution on the field 

We consulted several grassroots organizations working in underserved neighborhoods in Miami in Liberty City and Little Haiti with cohorts of individuals with no college degree. 

We further involved the target population by crowdsourcing the most evocative and inspiring success stories coming from underserved neighborhoods.

We 3D-modeled computer-generated avatars based on graduates who are counter-stereotypical figures of professional success and were able to radically transform their lives by pursuing this non-traditional pathway to prosperity. 

We are continuing our partnership with grassroots organizations and working together with recruiters from Miami-Dade County Public Schools to raise awareness.

Our Career Simulator on Vocational and Technical Education relates to the challenge dimension: “enable learners to make informed decisions about which pathways and jobs best suit them, including promoting the benefits of non-degree pathways to employment ». 

Our users are able to experience in virtual reality what a day in the life of these professionals look like while on the job. User are empowered to reimagine technical education through computer-generated imagery and real live action footage captured in 360°. We are bridging the current imagination gap by building a simulation of the financial freedom this non-traditional pathway can bring to.

There are 6 collaborators working on the Career Simulator: 

• 4 full-time employees: 
  • 1 360° video producer, 
  • 2 3D designers: one is focused on designing the workshop 3D environments, the other on modeling the 3D avatars of real-world professionals, 
  • 1 developer focused on webVR, 
• 2 half-time collaborators: 1 2D designer focused on branding and social media, 1 2D video producer 

The majority of colleagues are people of color, and the CEO is a white female. 

We place constant emphasis on building a diverse team right from the start of our onboarding process and throughout the lifecycle of our development by sharing and cultivating our origin story. 

We were founded thanks to the support of the Roddenberry Foundation, started by the family of the creator of Star Trek. Star Trek as a TV series was revolutionary in that it portrayed a radically inclusive team of peaceful space explorers collaborating towards a shared goal. 

We often use this metaphor of Star Trek to reconnect to the root cause of why the organization started, and how we can embody the ideals of peaceful explorers in tech for good. We even 3D-modeled a 3D spaceship we use as team meeting space so we can reconnect to the WHY of our org more easily. 

The existing methods that are used to solve this issue are mostly restricted to communicating about the benefits of technical education through traditional means of communication: video, text, photo, etc. 

Our solution to this problem is innovative because we utilize the unprecedented resources of an emerging technology – social webVR – to address our problem. Our simulator is immersive, engaging, capitalizing on the aura of cutting-edge technology and game-like visuals to inspire younger generations to reimagine technical education. 

Moreover, our innovative solution draws from cutting-edge peer-reviewed scientific results, which have shown that virtual reality induces a strong sense of presence and trigger “place illusion” (Pr. Mel Slater). This refers to the illusion of being present there in the computer-generated environment. So, when people are inside the career simulator, they are experiencing the different job simulators as real. This allows them to pre-visualize and pre-experience the outcomes of multiple career choices, and thus make more informed decisions about what suits them best. 

The innovation we also draw from pertains to virtual embodiment. Peer-reviewed studies in cyberpsychology and computer science have shown that embodying diverse avatars in a virtual simulation can induce change in perception and behavior in the real world. Embodying Einstein in VR can boost your cognitive performance in the real world (Pr. Mel Slater). Our users are able to embody diverse figures of success and prosperity who have gotten to where they are through technical education:  this allows them to overcome bias and de-program the stigma attached to technical education.  

The Career Simulator is a social webVR experience which combines both 3D computer-generated imagery and live action 360° production. 

Core features include: 

- Authorized and secure access according to different user profiles: students / Technical Colleges recruiters / administration

- Access to virtual work environments and inspirational environments via a computer-generated avatar

- Real-time screen and webcam sharing

- Ability to import 3D objects in real time into virtual environments. 

The simulator is accessible through the web (currently only with a Miami-Dade County Technical Colleges recruiter for liability reasons) on all browsers and across devices: VR headset, tablet, smartphone. 

Because it is web-based and social, it means that our career simulator is: 

- scalable: no need for expensive bespoke hardware options and elite headsets. Our simulator runs obviously on all virtual reality headsets, but also on personal computers, tablets and smartphones. This universality of access ensures that the benefits of this simulator will rapidly disseminate and reach underserved populations who most need it. 

- engaging: functionalities incorporated in the simulator encourage interaction between learners (possibility to chat, pre-baked avatar animations, possibility to take a selfie inside of 3D environment to create memories and save memorabilia after the experience "I was there"), 

- “future-proof”: the landscape of software frameworks and hardware options in the virtual reality space is fairly volatile, so it is important that our solution be anchored on a technology that is here to last, regardless of XR trends: the web. 

WebXR is a technological framework which allows developers to provide shared and networked virtual reality experiences through the web. 

https://www.w3.org/TR/webxr/

https://github.com/immersive-web/webxr/blob/master/explainer.md

https://immersiveweb.dev

Our simulator is based on the scientific results reached by peer-reviewed scientific studies, including but not restricted to: 

• Realistic behavior induced in virtual environments by the “place illusion”
• VR embodiment to generate perception change and pro-social behavior
• VR to enhance cognitive performance

Slater, M. (2009). Place illusion and plausibility can lead to realistic behaviour in immersive virtual environments. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364(1535), 3549-3557.

Rosenberg, R. S., Baughman, S. L., & Bailenson, J. N. (2013). Virtual superheroes: Using superpowers in virtual reality to encourage prosocial behavior. PloS one, 8(1).

Banakou, D., Kishore, S., & Slater, M. (2018). Virtually being einstein results in an improvement in cognitive task performance and a decrease in age bias. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 917.

The root cause we have identified as the problem to address is the stigmatization of technical education, which hinders individuals to have access to the non-traditional life-changing pathways of economic prosperity it provides.

Our theory of change is the following: 

• Activity: by going through the Career Simulator, users will pre-visualize a variety of successful and high-earning career paths that technical colleges prepare to, through the lens of real-world success stories coming from a diverse and inclusive cohort of inspirational individuals.
• Output: users will gain more understanding about the transformative opportunities technical education offers, while overcoming the bias they may have against it.
• Short-term outcome: users enroll in technical colleges and get a career in one year or two years. 
• Long-term outcome: upon graduating in a short period of time (and sometimes even before graduating), while staying debt-free, users get a job and find financial freedom. 

Now that we have completed this pilot with Miami-Dade County Public Schools, our goal is to replicate in other school boards and use this concept of the career simulator to amplify awareness about technical education, while destigmatizing it. We are already in talks with Broward County School Board. 

The fact that we already have set up a precedent with the 4th largest school board in the nation is a powerful argument for other school boards to follow suit.

Our goals include: 

- developing a more extensive range of career simulations to cover more industries and opportunities for the communities we serve,

- testing with diverse populations in more states to better understand how to create transformational virtual experiences which will have impact on a diverse set of cultural backgrounds, 

- collecting longitudinal data to better assess the sustainability of the impact we strive to generate, and notably the conversion rate between exposure to the virtual reality simulator, enrollment, graduation from a technical college program and employment. 

The current barriers we are experiencing are mostly financial and data-related. 

• We have already overcome most technical barriers and figured out how to host interactive hybrid 3D/360° experiences on the web in a networked setting for multiple users to enjoy. 
• There are currently no legal barriers. 
• The cultural barrier is at the root of this concept, because our goal is to allow users to transform their perception of technical education and bring about a cultural change. 
• The market barrier is mostly contextual with the COVID-19-related economic crisis. Our main market is comprised of school boards, which are likely to experience budget cuts. The risk would be that they cut this type of initiative which pertains to marketing, communication and cultural change, in order to focus solely on absolutely essential operations and services. 
• We need to test our solution with a larger population set to collect more data and iterate more quickly.

• Technical barriers: we plan on investing more time and resources to perfect the optimization process for 3D workshop environments. We are going to figure out a way to host more users simultaneously in the same 3D environments to perfect the social aspect of the experience. (Right now, our experiences are designed to have 25 concurrent users.)  
• Financial barriers: we are planning on raising funds from other sources of funding than the school boards to compensate for budget cuts in a proactive approach. 
• Data-related barriers: we plan on partnering with more school boards, workforce boards and different stakeholders which are invested in the future of work in order to test our solution further. 

We are already cooperating with the Miami-Dade County Technical Colleges marketing department to collect outcome data about the conversion rate between the career simulator and enrollment rates. 

Their recruiters will operate the simulator, which makes data collection smooth and easy. 

Other outcome data we would like to collect is longitudinal data to make sure that the conversion rate yield lasting and durable impact on the lives of the populations we serve. We would like to track over time: 

• If users of the simulator complete the technical programs they pre-visualized through virtual reality and become successful graduates, 
• If and when users are able to find a job. 
• What their starting salary is, 
• What their salary is one year into their newly-found career. 

We are an interdisciplinary and international team of designers, developers and producers. We internally have all the skills and expertise needed to grow this concept and scale up: 3D-modeling and optimization of computer-generated environments, 3D-modeling of humanoid avatars, 360° live action video production and post-production, webVR development (Javascript).

WebVR is still an emerging technology which makes the alliance of our expertise set pretty unique. 

We understand the plight of the communities we serve from the inside. Two of our full-time team members are first-generation college graduates, the majority of our team is an ethnic “minority”: out of 7, 5 are people of color, and 2 are first-generation immigrants. One of our board members is an activist who fights for the rights of the underserved communities we are prioritizing.

We are currently partnering with the Marketing Department of Miami-Dade County Public Schools and a network of grassroots organizations which are collaborating with them to raise awareness about their technical programs. 

They helped us for the following phases of the project lifecycle: 

• Problem statement and preliminary field research 
• Funding 
• Designing of the simulator

And they are now helping us with the dissemination phase.

Our current social business model is that we provide a free service to communities while being sponsored by a school board. 

The social value we bring is the ability to test-drive possible professional futures that debt-free and fast-tracked pathways to employment provide. 

The monetary value we bring is that we raise awareness about much needed programs which can allow them to get a career in one year (or two at most), and achieve financial prosperity while avoiding the trap of college debt.

With the current economic context and the budget cuts that school boards are likely to suffer from, our safest path towards financial sustainability would be not to be tied to school board budgets. 

One business model we are exploring is to be funded by corporations and industries which would be employing technical college graduates. For these stakeholders, it’s very important to recruit talented and trained individuals, so it is in their best interest if users are converted to technical career paths through the simulator. 

We already have a precedent for this in that we closely collaborated with Siemens to co-produce a 360° live action module pertaining to Building Automation Systems (BAS). They funded the BAS lab at Miami Lakes Technical Educational Center for Miami-Dade County Public Schools students to attend, get proper training and be hired by them. We already have established a good relationship as they helped us co-design the live action 360° module which simulates a day in the life of a BAS technician. 

The sustainable business model would be to get funding from industry leaders like Siemens to develop more career simulations and provide them for free to different school boards across the country.

We have received a $100k grant from Miami-Dade County Public Schools to pilot the Career Simulator for their Technical Colleges.

We are seeking 150k of grant money to develop simulations for more career pathways and scale up. This sum would allow us to be independent of public sources of funding in these uncertain times and continue to provide our simulation services for free to populations who will most benefit from it.

Our expected expenses for 2021 amount to $240,000, which would allow us to fund 5 full-time employees over a period of 12 months.

We are applying to this challenge for a variety of reasons: 

• To be able to partner with workforce boards for a pilot which would extend the scope of our current reach, 
• To co-design future iterations of the career simulator with workforce development experts, while benefiting from private funding,
• To collect more user data to iterate and improve on our solution and be smarter about how we can deliver scalable social impact on this subject. 

We would greatly benefit from support on a variety of points: 

• Iterating on our business model to ensure financial sustainability during uncertain times,
• Co-designing future variations of the Career Simulator
• Helping us identify additional talent we can invite to come on board to grow our team and sustain our scaling up dynamic,
• Raising awareness about the initiative and helping spread the word to gain more traction and make sure people who need the Career Simulator will actually hear about it. 

It would be an honor to partner with all the organizations which generously support this program, and to benefit from their mentorship and precious guidance on bringing about breakthroughs for scalable social impact.

On top of this, we would be happy to collaborate with The Free America Foundation, as one of our board members is a former convicted felon and he is always advocating for giving people a second chance. We are definitely passionate about enabling former felons to reimagine fast-tracked pathways to financial freedom. 

In order to test the solution on a global scale, we would be more than happy to benefit mentorship from the Skoll Foundation which has extensive experience on multiple continents. We would be interested in testing the “transferability” of our career simulator to different countries.