Mike Hoyt
I'm Mike Hoyt, director of the Bootstrap Collaborative at Central Wyoming College, where we support local businesses and entrepreneurs. I've incorporated VR technology in my entrepreneurship essentials class and with community businesses to enhance business and soft skills in a practical setting. The use of VR has provided valuable opportunities for practical skills development in both educational and professional contexts.
Chapters
Transcript
Hi. My name is Mike Hoyt. Uh, I work for Central Wyoming College, and I'm the director of our Bootstrap Collaborative. That's a group focused on supporting businesses, uh, startups, and entrepreneurs in our local community. So my goal really was all about exposure. Specifically, I had 22 areas. The first one was, um. In the classroom, I teach an entrepreneurship essentials class, and so I wanted to expose the kids a little bit to, uh, to the VR and also in the work I do with the bootstrap, uh, I work with a lot of community businesses and startups. And so the idea was very specifically telling them about this new tool and help explore the technology to improve their business skills and some of their soft skills, uh, in a safe setting. So, uh, I've used the VR a couple of times, uh, both in the classroom and in, uh, with, with community members with the bootstrap, and specifically, the goal was to give them an opportunity to practice soft skills. Um, in startups with business, uh, oftentimes, uh, founders will have a, a great idea and be really experienced with a particular Area, but not be great with maybe some of their communication skills. So I thought this was an awesome opportunity for them to practice some of those types of things in a safe spot, to work on their communication, to work on interview preps or handling uh difficult conversations. And I love the idea of having feedback that was available for them to talk to them about how fast they were talking, or were they using gestures when they were going through? Were they making good eye contact specifically uh when they were having these conversations. And this is all tools that are available uh through some of the software with our VR units. As far as impact goes, um, both student and, uh, community response have been really great. Uh, I've been very pleased after the events, uh, with requests, want to, um, learn a little bit more about our catalog of software options for classes, for other types of, uh, soft skill development. Also, um, In my work, we do a lot of uh business plan preparation, uh, both in a theoretical sense, academically, but also practically as uh students and community members are starting small businesses, uh, as entrepreneurs and the opportunity for them to discuss how this can be a tool as part of their HR. Um, plan, their HR strategy to help them work on developing themselves, developing their people, and really kind of improving their skill sets in this particular business area. So if I was talking with another faculty, um, I would have two recommendations. The first one is build up excitement. Uh, like anything in a classroom, it's all about, um, Kind of the student involvement and engagement. And if the, the professor is excited, if they think this is a cool tool and it's gonna be fun and different and new, then, uh, then that's gonna come across. That's gonna reflect really well with the students and they're gonna wanna try it. They're gonna be excited. The second idea that I would recommend is good preparation, right? And so, a good way of doing this that we worked out as we partnered with our library team was, uh, who administers our VR uh packages on campus is, uh, having a little listing of all the courses, the classes, including like the amount of time and the type of topics and specifics, uh, that they delve into and being able to, uh, Uh, to share those with students before the actual event for training, so that way they can kind of see, pick and choose which ones are most interesting to them and get a little bit of excitement. They also can kind of talk with their friends and really build things, and then it kind of creates momentum, uh, and anticipation, which, uh, in my, uh, in my experience, led to much stronger results. So, the, the final thought that I would share about VR uh on campus here in higher education is this is a really awesome tool that can be shared with the community. Uh, oftentimes in our small communities, our people and businesses look to, uh, the community colleges and higher education, uh, for, uh, new tech, new ideas. New learning and uh with this as a new tool, this is a great way to bridge the gap between kind of to bring people onto campus, to learn about different tools that are available and to make more connections, uh, to really kind of tie, uh, the school, the community college, or, or, uh, university into, um, What's going on with local businesses, local governments, local individuals, um, that maybe don't have these types of resources, but can potentially use them to improve themselves, to improve their business, and to really make a start and almost even a try before they By if they wanted to get involved with them themselves and kind of incorporate that technology in their own organization. So, that would be my invitation is uh do a little bit of marketing work and uh share with the communities to bring people on campus and share this cool tech. Thanks.