Learning Life Skills Through Virtual Reality

You never know when inspiration will strike. For Caroline M., a student in our 12 plus program, inspiration was literally in the palm of her hands. As an avid fan of the action-adventure video game Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, she plays it on her Nintendo Switch during the morning bus ride to the off-campus community-based instruction site.

“Breath of the Wild” offers gamers an “open world” to explore freely- a virtual reality that holds each player accountable for self-preservation and encourages exploration and experimentation. This can mean anything from gathering ingredients and using them to prepare meals, dressing appropriately for weather conditions, perspective taking, taking inventory, problem solving, critical thinking and general independent living skills.

One bus ride, Caroline was explaining the purpose of the game to Mrs. Vallo our Structured Learning Experience Coordinator and sharing her thoughts on virtual reality when a light bulb went off.  Together they met the same conclusion; a lot of life skills can be learned from the virtual reality world that gaming provides. And so Caroline set out to prepare her own lesson plan involving the examination of what skills can be learned from video games.

In an interview following her presentation, Caroline explained how the lesson planning process was very involved and went through many phases starting way back in December.  With a little help from Ms. Vallo, she put together a thorough and interactive lesson plan complete with visual reinforcements and hands-on participation from the class.

Caroline started her lesson with a very enthusiastic and engaging delivery.  Her polished and professional power point provided a lesson objective, a synopsis of the game for those that weren’t familiar, and an interactive class assignment that involved playing the game while focusing on completing specific independent living tasks. The class had a great time and now has a whole new perspective on how the use of video games can build skills and confidence in real life.