VR In Education: Why Is This Technology So Important?
- Technology New Innovation & Researches
Sophia Silva- 0
- 14 minutes read
Education is the basics of a strong economy. It raises human capital, boosts economic outcomes, and navigates productivity. For people in education, education paves the way to acquire new skills and with the adoption of VR in education, the landscape of learning is changing completely.
Education is the primer for a thriving society, and the transfer of knowledge has always been the top aim of civilization since the very beginning. People are continuously looking for avenues to make the transfer of knowledge easier, quicker, and more effective.
In the era of virtual lights, we have a chance to allow better learning along with technology. VR looks to be the obvious next step for the development of education. In this article, we are going to see the impact of VR in education and how this technology holds the ability to alter the way educational content is delivered.
VR In Education Research: How We Learn Today?
Before getting into the details of how VR in education will help enhance the process of learning, it is crucial to evaluate why we need to enhance the quality of education in the very first place. According to the history of VR in education, most technologies that are designed to help to learn have been focused on allowing access to data that involves facts and observations about the world. Prior to computers, we had a powerful tool that allowed us to retain facts: books.
In the era of virtual technologies, books are being altered into ebooks. Modern search engines make finding facts really convenient, where with just a few clicks you can get answers to many questions. While knowledge has become more conveniently accessible for most people, the present approach to education has two prominent issues:
It is dependent on the same old format of fact retention
The methods of teaching are aimed at offering facts, however, having access to and retaining a lot of data is not learning. Being informed is not similar to being educated.
A lot of people have tension comprehending data
Too much data received in a short span of time can conveniently overwhelm students. As a result, they tend to become bored, disengaged, and generally unsure why they are learning about a specific topic in the very first place.
What Makes VR In Education Advantageous?
Virtual reality can be employed to improve the learning and engagement of students. Virtual reality education can change the way educational content is delivered, it operates on the premise of formulating a digital space that is either real or is imagined and enables users not only to see it but also to communicate with it. But completely immersed in what you are learning motivates you to completely understand it. It will need fewer cognitive loads for processing the data.
Here are some of the benefits of VR in education.
Better Sense Of Place
When students read about anything, they often wish to experience it. With virtual reality, they are not limited to word illustration or book illustrations; they can delve into the topic and see how matters are put together.
Thanks to the idea of the presence VR offers, students can learn about a topic by living it. It is convenient to forget that virtual reality experiences are not real — a body actually thinks it is in a new place. This feeling associates the mind in a way that is very remarkable.
Scale Learning Experience
Technologies like science labs are great as they enable students to evaluate how things operate based on practical experience. But such technologies are costly and almost impossible for scaling. They are also restricted in the number of things they can do.
Learn By Doing
It is a well known fact that people learn ideas by doing, however, if you inspect modern education, you will see how small learning actually occurs by doing. Students are aimed at reading instructions rather than using them in practice.
VR in education offers an experienced anchor to the data. With VR education, learners are inspired in discovering for themselves. Students have a chance to learn by doing rather than passively reading it.
Emotional Reaction
Intuitive reactions to what we are going through are fundamental to creating memories. VR in education makes it convenient to engage students the entire time, making experiences memorable.
Develop Creativity
Having virtual reality in education is useful not only for the consumption of content, but it is also ideal for the creation of content. By offering students powerful tools like Tilt Brush, you help them to boost their creativity.
Visual Learning
A lot of individuals are visual learners and virtual reality is really helpful for this group of learners. Instead of reading about matters, students actually see the things they are learning about. Being able to see complicated operations or mechanisms makes them more convenient to comprehend.
Users Are Ready To Embrace Latest Technology
The first notion that pops into the mind of anyone when they think about virtual reality technology is an entertainment experience. Various designers witness that VR has historically been dedicated to gaming, but things are altering. As per the latest survey conducted by Greenlight VR, the wish for education outweighs the desire for gaming content which is 63.9% vs 61%.
Categories Of VR In Education
Let us now see where we can employ virtual reality in education. VR can be used in almost everything concerning education. It formulates an infinite set of opportunities that people can experience. Here are some of the types of experiences one can create using VR.
Virtual Fields Trip
The technology of virtual reality can be used for engaging students in topics that are associated with geography, literature, and history by providing a deeply immersive sense of place and also time. Simply imagine geography lessons where you can actually visit a place across the globe. This type of experience is always more enhancing than just reading it.
“With VR, they aren’t limited to word descriptions or book illustrations; they can explore the topic and see how things are put together.”
Google expedition is a good instance of a virtual reality education apps that are designed to offer such an experience. The expedition is a library of field trips that are available for regular smartphone users. Every trip is made up of panoramas, and trips differ from the Great Wall of China to even Mars. People across the globe can travel to places that are impossible to visit in person.
High Tech Training
Virtual reality is a good option for the extensive technical training fields such as the military or the medical industry. For instance, the most prominent challenge for medical students learning anatomy is evaluating the body in three dimensions and how varied systems fit together. VR in education can help to overcome this problem.
One good instance is the virtual reality system that is used by Mendel Grammar School in Opava City, Czech Republic, which aids students in biology classes to learn about the anatomy of the eye. TThe team that is working on this venture employed a Leap Motion controller and specifically adopted Oculus Rift headsets to offer an innovative way of understanding anatomy.
Internships
Getting exposed to varied careers is an important part of the complete learning process. From early childhood, we dream about what we desire to become when we grow up, and those dreams are generally inspired by the professionals in our lives. Often this understanding is derived via internships.
Another advantage of having VR in the field of education is its ability to help widen the exposure of students to careers. It enhances the ability of people to imagine themselves in the shoes of others. Career expeditions portray what it is like to work in a career. Students can explore a day in someone’s career, see what the person is studying and evaluate what they like and dislike.
Group Learning
Some of the most crucial knowledge we gain does not come from what we see or hear from lectures, but rather from the debate. VR education offers the opportunity to make the experience of learning social by enabling students to communicate with each other. Using mapped facial expressions and avatars, people can come together for discussing, learning, and synthesizing from one another.
Distance Learning
VR enables us to bridge the gap between learners and educators. With virtual reality, distant learning tools can put students and educators together in the same room along with digital portrayals of themselves where teachers can teleport into the VR space and guide students via their experiences.
5 Primary Properties Of Good VR Learning Process
VR educational applications should have the following properties:
Immersive:
Designers should strive at creating the feeling that users are in an experience. For instance, if you develop a history application, make history live for students who are learning that.
Easy To Use:
Discard the requirement to have special skills for interacting with a VR 3D design application.
Meaningful:
Meaning is really crucial for students. You cannot create a good VR learning experience without a proper story. That is the reason, it is so crucial to develop the art of storytelling. Stories quite conveniently offer the best vehicle to deliver messages that are not only heard and understood but also elicit and inspire actions.
Adaptable:
As Albert Einstein once quoted,
“I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.”
VR experience should enable the students to explore at their own pace. The application should offer complete control over the difficulty level. Designers should establish how students learn and then utilize this knowledge for designing VR items that enable effective learning.
Measurable:
Every educational tool should offer a measured impact. Teachers should be able to track the parameters of education so that they can measure the final knowledge of a subject. When designing experiences for VR education, it is important to select appropriate metrics and make it evident what criteria will be employed to calculate the success and also failure.
Conclusion
VR in education is on the edge and without any doubt, it will alter the world as we know it. 21st-century classrooms will be technologically developed places of learning, with the virtual reality technology prominently increasing the learning and engagement of students. VR experiences will surely inspire a completely new generation of bright and young students, ready to change and innovate the world.
