Parker University: Advancing Chiropractic Training with VR

Brad Scoggin
Mary Lee, welcome to the show.

Mary Lee Carter
Thank you. I appreciate you having me on.

Brad Scoggin
Before we dive in, could you give us a quick overview of the XR applications at Parker University?

Mary Lee Carter
We have several XR applications we’re working with. One of our most recent projects is our metaverse—a digital twin we developed with VictoryXR. It allows us to access not only our unique spaces, both interior and exterior, but also 60 distinct classrooms and spaces, along with thousands of virtual and 3D assets that we can utilize. We can take full advantage of those resources.

Brad Scoggin
That’s awesome. Now, let’s talk about your role as the Immersive Teaching and Learning Specialist. How did Parker University get into VR, and what has your role been in that process?

Mary Lee Carter
It actually started before I joined Parker four years ago, and it all began with a tornado. I love telling that story because it illustrates how we were able to pivot. In October 2019, a large tornado—an E3 or F4—hit the Dallas area during a Cowboys game, and it partially destroyed our campus. We lost a lot of classroom space. Over the course of a week, we had to transition to online instruction for programs that are typically very hands-on and in-person.

I want to give a shout-out to our faculty, administration, and everyone involved for making that happen. As part of that shift, we looked for ways to reach out to students and give them more opportunities, particularly through digital technology. Fast forward to March 2020, and we all know we had to pivot to online instruction, but fortunately, we were already prepared. We were working with Touch of Life Technologies, which provides our digital human dissection tool. We still use our cadaver lab, but we needed more readily accessible resources. The question became, “How do we fill those gaps?” VR, particularly immersive virtual reality, stood out as the best solution. We didn’t have space for a large simulation lab, but we could deploy VR technology.

Brad Scoggin
We often talk about one of the biggest benefits of VR in learning and education: accessibility. Especially when events like tornadoes create a need, VR can be a lifesaver. Also, the cadaver lab is an interesting component. Even without a natural disaster, there are still logistical challenges with accessing the lab. VR offers the ability to repeatedly use the same cadaver model, which is fascinating. I want to circle back to something you mentioned earlier. We had Steve Grubbs on the show recently, and he discussed the concept of metaversities. For those who may not fully understand what that is, could you explain it and how it’s been helpful for you?

Mary Lee Carter
The metaverse is a digital representation of our campus. I became interested in it a few years ago, particularly as a way to engage students who might not be physically on campus. During our experience with COVID, we started a blended hybrid cohort of chiropractic students whose first four trimesters are entirely online. These students come from various locations, and many don’t live locally, so we wanted them to virtually experience the campus.

We looked at various options, and VictoryXR was the clear leader in this space. They were at the cutting edge of working with higher education institutions. I reached out to John King at VictoryXR, and after several discussions, we were able to bring the project to life last year. It’s been really exciting to show not just our blended students but prospective students how they can experience the campus virtually. We can host classes, give virtual tours, and do a lot of other exciting things to support student learning.

Brad Scoggin
I’d love to hear your perspective on how students have responded to this. We often talk about the ROI of VR—accessibility, faster training, etc.—but there’s also a softer side to VR that’s hard to measure but still provides a lot of value. What have you heard from students who use the metaverse to feel connected to campus?

Mary Lee Carter
I love the “wow” factor when students experience it for the first time. Recently, I demoed our technologies for a group of advanced students in leadership, and they were amazed at how they could virtually sit in a classroom that had been replicated. They could see each other as avatars and connect the same way they would in person.

Some students can’t visit campus for tours due to distance, financial constraints, or health reasons. But they can still take a virtual tour. Once they make that virtual connection, when they visit in person, the campus will feel familiar. They’ll have a sense of connection that might not have been possible if they had just watched a video.

Will Stackable
I’m curious, how many students are using the metaverse with headsets? And can they access it via a web browser, too?

Mary Lee Carter
Yes, Victoria XR does offer a web browser option for the metaverse. Students can use a laptop or other devices to walk around the virtual campus without a headset. It makes the experience accessible to a wider audience.

Will Stackable
That makes sense. You mentioned a cohort of chiropractic students who take the first part of their classes virtually. Are they also using VR in other ways? Are they taking full classes with headsets?

Mary Lee Carter
Our blended cohort of students started about six trimesters ago. As a result of lessons learned during COVID, we realized there are ways to deliver high-quality, hands-on experiences to students who can’t be physically present. Each student receives a Quest 2 headset along with their laptop, and we’re now upgrading to Quest 3.

Mary Lee Carter
We’re using a variety of applications, one of which is our digital anatomy tool. We’ve been working with Touch of Life Technologies, and students have access to their interactive anatomy tables, not only on campus but also via desktop or in the Quest 3 headset. This past summer, we began offering it to our cohort, providing them multiple ways to engage with anatomy—something essential for them to be successful as clinicians.

Will Stackable
My wife, who’s a registered nurse, often talks about how difficult it was to memorize the muscles and bones using a flat textbook. What kind of feedback have you received from students about the VR experience, and have you seen improvements in outcomes, particularly in anatomy?

Mary Lee Carter
Most of our feedback right now is anecdotal. We haven’t had the opportunity to collect formal data because it’s been so recent, and we wanted to pilot it. This past summer, we worked with our students. Touch of Life has been working with us to make this available in an untethered version, so we could deploy it more easily to students without requiring high-powered laptops. The comments I hear from students are, “I wish I’d had this when I took anatomy,” or, “This is going to really help me when I get into the cadaver lab and work with actual cadavers.” Even our blended students still have the option, once they come to campus after their fourth trimester, to return and do physical dissection. I know that the first group of students who have had access to this in person are getting great feedback from their faculty about how well-prepared they seem. It’s purely anecdotal, but we’re really encouraged by it.

Brad Scoggin
The anecdotal feedback is still very valuable and can be powerful. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the student-to-headset ratio. Is your vision one-to-one, or do multiple students share a device?

Mary Lee Carter
For in-person sessions, we have a VR lab. We’ve converted a classroom into a VR lab, and I currently manage 30 headsets on campus. These are managed through our XR program. I typically set up 12 to 15 headsets at a time, and students come into the lab to engage with whatever application has been assigned. We also use Body Swaps, which is great for all of our programs. For the blended cohort, each student gets their own headset, so it’s a one-to-one model. These headsets are not managed because it’s easier for deployment. Students keep their headsets, but we still have the ability to send them specific content for their use. So, for in-person labs, it’s typically one-to-many, but for the blended cohort, it’s one-to-one.

Brad Scoggin
That’s a really interesting model. You’ve got a mix of one-to-one and one-to-many. The anatomy use case is very powerful. Can you tell us more about Body Swaps and the benefits you’ve seen there?

Mary Lee Carter
We started using Body Swaps because it offered more versatility for deploying across different programs, beyond just our chiropractic program. While our Doctor of Chiropractic program is our largest, we have about 34 total programs, all of which are healthcare- and human performance-related. For example, we have diagnostic and cardiac sonography programs.

For Body Swaps, we use it for communications-based scenarios, like mock job interviews. Seniors in our diagnostic and cardiac sonography programs go through a mock interview at the end of their two-year program. We use Body Swaps to help them prepare for that. They can do a virtual job interview, answer questions, and receive feedback shaped by AI, including feedback on their eye contact, speech speed, stuttering, and whether they use filler words like “um.” This feedback is valuable for their professional development. We’ve rolled this out to eight of our classes now, and it’s been effective across different areas of communication—whether they’re interacting with patients, team members, or classmates. It provides safe, non-threatening experience with immediate, objective feedback.

Brad Scoggin
That’s great. I can relate to the value of having someone point out your “ums” and pauses. We had a great interview with Chris about a year ago, and I recommend everyone check out that episode. Body Swaps is doing amazing things. What challenges have you faced in rolling out XR at Parker?

Mary Lee Carter
One challenge has been that XR technology was not designed with chiropractic in mind. Finding vendors willing to create chiropractic-specific scenarios was difficult. Our interventions are different—our patients move a lot, and part of our evaluation involves assessing range of motion, pain levels, and how the body moves. We initially reached out to several vendors, and SimX was one that agreed to create custom scenarios for us, specific to chiropractic interventions. This was a challenge for both us and the vendors, as these movements are very specific. SimX has been a great partner, and together we’ve developed 90 cases specific to chiropractic. But it takes time. These assets had to be developed from scratch.

Another challenge is keeping up with rapidly changing technology. We’ve gone from Oculus for Business to Oculus Consumer, then to Meta, and now to the Quest 3. You really have to stay on top of these changes. Otherwise, you could run into issues with deploying applications, especially if an update changes something critical, like accessibility to Wi-Fi. It requires a bit of improvisation, but the community is supportive, and we all share resources and information, which makes it easier.

Brad Scoggin
One of the consistent challenges we hear from the companies we work with is related to content. There are so many content creators out there, and it’s not always clear which ones are high quality. We’ve tried to address this at ArborXR by creating a content directory to help people find trusted content creators. What are your thoughts on off-the-shelf versus custom content, and how does that play into your strategy?

Mary Lee Carter
Off-the-shelf content was a challenge for us, especially in chiropractic. It’s hard to use a nursing scenario for chiropractic students, or an EMT scenario. Once we started working with SimX, we identified the gaps and asked, “What else can we use this for to support our students?” Communication, for example, was an area we targeted.

I’m really excited about the possibility of content authoring with different platforms, especially using AI. VictoryXR has recently rolled out tools that allow us to create lessons from scratch with the exact content we want. That’s been very exciting for us, and it gives us the ability to tailor content to fit our curriculum and students’ learning objectives. Being able to make minor changes to content, or create something custom for our needs, is always exciting. I don’t care who you are, that’s exciting!

Will Stackable
I agree. More and more great self-authoring tools are emerging, and we’re seeing use cases in both enterprise and education, especially in healthcare. We recently spoke with Devin from VRPatients, who has a powerful no-code VR simulation builder. He demonstrated how easy it is to spin up an environment, add content, and dial in specific scenarios.

For programs that need to move quickly, or if they have staff or students interested in content creation, these self-authoring tools are great. Of course, custom content development still has its place for higher-quality production, but it’s exciting that there are now tools that allow programs to develop content internally and move quickly.There’s also the challenge of building out a VR lab, which we’re seeing more frequently at universities and even K-12 schools around the world. It reminds me of when we had computer labs in school. What’s it been like to build out a VR lab, and now that you’re a bit further down the road, what have you learned? What challenges have you faced, and how have you overcome them?

If you’re trying to move quickly and do things more internally, and if you have students or staff interested in it, there are many self-authoring tools available. We’ll link a few in the show notes. I wanted to ask, because we’re seeing this more and more at universities and even in K-12 schools worldwide, about the idea of a VR lab. It reminds me of when I was a kid and we had computer labs because we didn’t have computers at home.

What does it look like to build a VR lab? Now that you’re a little further along, what have you learned? What are some of the challenges you’ve faced, and how have you overcome them?

Mary Lee Carter
One of the biggest challenges, especially in some of these buildings, is that the building housing my VR lab was essentially taken down to the studs and rebuilt for technology that didn’t even exist when we designed it. Every classroom is essentially a recording studio. Every room has resources to record lectures, great connectivity, and new projectors. There’s a lot available to us.

That said, some of the biggest challenges are Wi-Fi, especially in older buildings, and we do have some older buildings on campus. Wi-Fi and connectivity can be a challenge, especially when you try to get it outside the regular network for security reasons. Working with IT is obviously one of the big challenges. The nice thing about VR is that the space requirement is much smaller than a simulation lab. You can essentially turn any space, as long as it’s at least 8 by 8 or 10 by 10 feet, into a VR lab.

What I’ve done is invest in charging cases. We have two that hold about 15 to 18 headsets each. They’re constantly connected, and I can literally roll them over to another building on campus. So I have a space, but it’s also mobile, making it more available. The more accessible it is to our faculty and students, the higher the engagement and the better the adaptability.

Brad Scoggin
One of the benefits we’ve seen from customers with Wi-Fi issues is the differential updating feature of Arbor. This allows them to update only the part of the content that needs updating, rather than the entire file. With a deployment of 30 devices, what benefits have you experienced with ArborXR?

Mary Lee Carter
One of the things I love is the ability to simply create a class. We do a lot of demos and events on campus, as well as continuing education events in Las Vegas and Orlando. At those events, we have a large tech booth where we transport all of our tech. I set the headsets up in kiosk mode, with four applications I want people to access. I can create classes and limit access to specific information. It’s easy to work with my student workers and staff to just say, “Put them in a headset, turn it on.” That’s all they need to do because I’ve already created the class in Arbor, and the system automatically loads the content. I also appreciate the ability to deploy content to specific headsets. I’m in the process of migrating all of our headsets to Quest Stories, so as I create new classes and groups, it’s simple to drag and drop everything into my Arbor group and deploy it to the headsets.

Brad Scoggin
It’s great to hear that. We’re really passionate about the adoption of XR, and there are still many pain points to address. You’re on the frontlines, deploying it and working with leadership to continue securing buy-in for VR. Every step of the process has to be a good experience. Even at a small scale, like 5 or 10 devices, Arbor makes the experience better. It simplifies things and helps sell leadership on the idea that it’s not a complicated process. With Arbor, you put on the device, and it just works. We just launched Remote View with Quest, something we’ve been asking for a long time. That’s huge for an educational setting. It seems like they’re becoming more open and willing to work with groups like us. As we close, you’ve been doing this for four years, even with the challenges of Covid and a tornado. Where do you see VR going at Parker and beyond? What’s the future of VR for you?

Mary Lee Carter
There’s no question, we’re not going back. We’re moving forward. We’re expanding our offerings to students and rolling this out to more courses. I have two faculty members excited about teaching in the metaverse, hopefully this fall. We’re working on ways to incorporate this into our programs across campus. We’re also in the early stages of developing an immersive space, though I don’t have many details yet. It will be a key part of our focus on human performance, not just athletic performance, but also how we help our bodies perform their jobs. We’re really excited about ways to incorporate extended reality and immersive technology into those settings. The demand is definitely there, with so many students and faculty asking for it. Right now, our only limiting factor is time and resources. But we’re definitely excited about the future.

Brad Scoggin:
Well, that’s that’s super encouraging for us. And we appreciate you coming on the show. We appreciate what you’re doing, pushing this forward. We’ll look back ten years from now, and there will be many leaders all over the world that we say, well, that’s the those are the people that brought this shift. And it sounds dramatic, but I love to say this, I really believe that VR is empowering a learning revolution, you know, and I think it’s really exciting. If you could just get past the technology and think about the fact that people are learning faster, retaining more information, and they have access now. It’s extremely powerful. So this has been great, If someone wants to reach out and maybe ask you questions or learn from you, is LinkedIn the best place to find you?

Mary Lee Carter
Yes, LinkedIn is a great resource. I’m active and keep my profile up to date. I love showing off what we’re doing, so I’d love to connect with anyone there. There are many groups on LinkedIn for VR education, specifically for higher education. I connect with as many people as I can because we’re all working together on this.

Brad Scoggin:
Well, Mary Lee, thanks so much. We really appreciate it. Look forward to chatting again soon.

Mary Lee Carter
Thank you. I appreciate it. Have a great day. If anyone has any questions, feel free to reach out.

Will Stackable
Thanks, Mary Lee.

Brad Scoggin
I always love when we see evidence of ArborXR’s value, even at a small scale. Mary Lee is definitely seeing that.

Will Stackable
Yeah, with labs popping up all over, and having multiple use cases for VR. I was looking up the cost of a cadaver, which ranges from $5,000 to $10,000 for just one. Obviously, that’s expensive for a school, and some schools can’t afford it. For a remote student, what’s the alternative? Looking at textbooks and trying to make sense of it? VR has great potential for this.

It’s a great story about the power of VR and what it can be used for. I think in the future, campuses will continue to create digital twins in metaversities. It’s exciting to see universities, like VictoryXR, leading the charge. For Mary Lee, one of the most positive aspects of VR is that prospective students can walk around virtual campuses and get a feel for what it’s like to be a student. When we went to college, I guess it was just a college tour, right? You had to show up on campus and actually walk around with your real legs. I think that’s a major shift.

Brad Scoggin
By the way, for those who know the ArborXR team and know Bradley, this won’t surprise you…

Will Stackable
He’s not talking about himself. A different Bradley.

Brad Scoggin
Bradley is one of our partnership people, and he use to give university tours. That’s Bradley. Well, be sure and check us out wherever you get your podcasts, and we will see you next time.