Virtual Reality (VR) in Education

Education is the foundation of a thriving society, and knowledge transfer has been a top priority for societies since the dawn of time. We're constantly searching for ways to make knowledge transfer easier, faster, and more effective.

In the era of digital devices, we have the opportunity to learn better with technology. Virtual Reality (VR) seems to be the natural next step in the evolution of education.

In this article, I'll show how Virtual Reality can change the way educational content is delivered.

Before we delve into the details of how VR in education will help improve the learning process, it's crucial to understand why we need to improve the quality of education in the first place. Historically, most technologies designed for learning aimed at facilitating access to information - facts and observations about the world. Before computers, we had a powerful tool that helped us preserve and convey facts: books.

In the era of digital technologies, books are converted into eBooks. Modern search engines make finding facts incredibly easy - with just a few clicks, you can find answers to many questions.

Even though knowledge has become more accessible to more people, the current approach to education has two significant issues:

Teaching methods focus on providing facts; however, having access to and absorbing a lot of information isn't the same as learning. Being informed is not the same as being educated.

Too much information received in a short time can easily overwhelm students. As a result, they become bored, disengaged, and usually don't understand why they are learning about a subject in the first place.

Virtual Reality can be used to enhance learning and student engagement. VR education can change the way educational content is delivered; it operates on the premise of creating a virtual world - real or imagined - and allows users to not only see it but also interact with it. Being immersed in what you're learning motivates you to fully understand it. It requires less cognitive load to process the information.

Here are just a few features that make Virtual Reality in education so powerful:

When students read about something, they often want to experience it. With VR, they're not limited to word descriptions or book illustrations; they can explore the subject and see how things fit together.

Thanks to the sense of presence (immersion) that VR offers, students can learn about a subject by experiencing it. It's easy to forget that VR experiences aren't real - the body genuinely believes it's in a new place. This feeling engages the mind in a remarkable way.

Virtual Reality setting of Rome
Instead of reading about Rome, VR headsets transport students to Rome.

Technologies like science labs are fantastic - they allow students to understand how things work based on practical experience.

A relatively small VR device can even function as an entire scientific laboratory.

But such technologies are expensive and almost impossible to scale. They're also limited in the number of things they can do.

It's a well-known fact that people learn best by doing; however, if you inspect modern education, you'll see how little learning actually happens by doing. Students focus on reading instructions instead of applying them in practice.

VR in education provides an experiential anchor for instruction. With VR education, students are inspired to discover for themselves. Students have the opportunity to learn by doing rather than passively reading.

Visceral reactions to what we experience are fundamental to forming memories. VR in education makes it easy to engage students all the time and make experiences unforgettable.

Having Virtual Reality in education is not only useful for content usage, but also for content creation. By giving students powerful tools like Tilt Brush, you help stimulate their creativity.

Many people are visual learners - VR is truly beneficial for this group of learners. Instead of reading about things, students actually see the things they're learning about. By being able to visualize complex functions or mechanisms, they become easier to understand.

The first idea that comes to everyone's mind when they think of VR technology is an entertainment experience. Many designers see VR as an extension of the gaming industry. It's true that VR has traditionally been dedicated to gaming, but things are changing. According to a recent survey conducted by Greenlight VR, the need for education outweighs the desire for game content - 63.9 percent versus 61 percent.

VR technology can be used to engage students in topics related to geography, history, or literature by providing a deeply immersive sense of place and time. Imagine geography lessons where you can visit any place in the world - this kind of experience is much more enriching than just reading about it.

With VR, they're not limited to word descriptions or book illustrations; they can explore the subject and see how things fit together.

Google Expeditions is a good example of an app that provides such an experience. Expedition is a library of excursions available for ordinary smartphone users. Each journey consists of VR panoramas and the journeys range from the Great Wall of China to Mars. People all over the world can visit places that are virtually impossible to visit physically.

Google has tested this app in hundreds of schools around the world. The project was extraordinarily successful: Google took over 1 million students in 11 countries on expeditions.

Of course, Virtual Reality will never replace real field trips and other travels, and it shouldn't. But VR makes experiences possible that would otherwise be impossible.

Of course, Virtual Reality will never replace real field trips and other travels, and it shouldn't. But VR makes experiences possible that would otherwise be impossible.

VR is a good solution for highly technical training fields like the military or the medical industry. The main challenge for medical students learning anatomy, for example, is understanding the body in three dimensions and how different systems fit together. VR education can help solve this problem.

A good example is the VR system used by Mendel Grammar School in Opava City, Czech Republic, that helps students in biology lessons learn more about the anatomy of the eye. The team working on this project used a Leap Motion controller and specially adapted Oculus Rift headsets to provide an innovative way to learn anatomy.

Getting exposure to different careers is an essential part of the learning process. From early childhood, we dream about what we want to be when we grow up, and those dreams are usually inspired by the professionals in our lives. Often, we gain this insight through internships.

I never teach my students, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.

Another advantage of Virtual Reality in education is the ability to increase students' exposure to a career. It enhances people's ability to see themselves in others' shoes.Career expeditions show what it's like to work in a field: students can explore a day in someone's career, see what a person studies, and understand what a person likes or dislikes about their work. As a result, the experience becomes familiar to students.

Some of the most crucial knowledge we acquire doesn't come from what we hear from teachers, but rather from collegiality and debate. VR education offers the opportunity to make learning experiences social by allowing students to interact with each other. With avatars and mapped facial expressions, people can come together to discuss, synthesize, and learn from each other.

VR edu-apps should have the following characteristics:

Designers should strive to create the feeling that users are experiencing an event. For instance, if you're developing a history app, bring history to life for students.

Eliminate the need to have special skills to interact with a VR app.

Meaning is very important to students. You can't create a good VR learning experience without a good story. That's why it's so important to promote the art of storytelling. Stories simply provide the best means to deliver messages that are not only heard and understood but also inspire and motivate action.

As Albert Einstein once said: 'I never teach my students, I just try to create the conditions in which they can learn.' VR experiences should enable students to explore at their own pace. The app should provide full control over the level of difficulty. Designers should determine how students learn and then use this knowledge to design VR products that facilitate effective learning.

Every educational tool must have a measured impact. Teachers must be able to track the metric data of education so they can measure the resulting knowledge of a subject. When designing experiences for VR education, it's essential to choose suitable statistics and make clear what criterion will be used to measure success and failure.

The transition from analog teaching practices to digital will change the way teaching looks. The role of a teacher will shift from content delivery to content facilitation. Teachers will focus on creating conditions for exploration, rather than delivering ready-made knowledge.

It's clear that we are in the early stages of VR - and it will continue to change. However, technology will continue to push the boundaries of how immersive VR can be. We will even see improvements in eye tracking and body tracking in the coming years. What we consider an immersive experience today will be seen as table stakes in the not-too-distant future.

VR has a high price tag that forms a significant barrier for many users. If we analyze the success of Google Expeditions, it's clear that Google was able to reach so many students because the hardware was truly accessible. To make VR education accessible to the majority of users, it's important to focus on creating VR experiences for devices users already have and turning these into powerful tools for education. A phone we have in our pockets and €20 - €100 headset devices - like Google Cardboard or Samsung Gear VR - should be enough to give students good VR experiences.

Virtual reality in education is visible on the horizon and it will undoubtedly change the world as we know it. Twenty-first-century classrooms will become technologically advanced learning spaces, with VR technology significantly enhancing student engagement and learning. VR experiences will inspire a whole new generation of young and smart students, ready to innovate and change the world.

At the same time, the next big thing in education is no longer dependent on technology, but rather on a teacher's decision to go ahead and use these technologies in the classroom. The global goal should be to make knowledge available, accessible, and affordable for everyone on earth.

Would you like to talk more about integrating VR into education or do you have practical questions about VR hardware? Feel free to contact us by phone at +31 (0)85 1302 742 or by email. We also have a showroom where we would be happy to welcome you. For more information and contact.