Education is a field that is constantly changing. New teaching methods emerge frequently, and schools adopt them but above all, new technologies have led to big advancements for the education field. A basic example is the access to information. Before, all information was found in books and therefore libraries. Today, the same information is available to us in our phone, computer, iBook, etc. (Vera et al. 2005) The education is evolving, but still presents the two following problems. Firstly, most courses are based on a fact retention format, which becomes obsolete as people can access information at any time anywhere. Secondly, schools are still based on stiff educational concepts which do not fit to everyone. This is why Virtual Reality (VR) is offering alternatives to these mentioned issues. (Babich, 2019)
VR education enables students to live something, by seeing and hearing it through 360° glasses blinding out the real world and blocking any external distractions. That way, students can visit places and understand mechanisms, by experiencing them instead of only hearing or reading them (Gadelha, 2018). According to Gadelha (2018), technology is already so prominent in our lives, it would be absurd not to include this technology to the educational system. Schools are evolving and using new tools such as electronic boards, tablets or others but most of them have not taken the step of including VR to their pedagogical methodologies.
VR is assessing the two mentioned problems in the following way. The approach of fact-retention is addressed with VR, as it is shown that students can remember theories more easily by experiencing them instead of reading or hearing them. Furthermore, concepts can be adapted to individuals instead of a one-size fits all approach, currently putting students in difficulty who don’t correspond to the teaching method. To conclude, it can be said that VR has big potential in the educational field and its benefits are still underestimated by schools.
Do you think school education would have been different with VR?
Babich, N. (2019), “How VR In Education Will Change How We Learn And Teach”, Accessed on 2 October 2020 on https://xd.adobe.com/ideas/principles/emerging-technology/virtual-reality-will-change-learn-teach/
Gadelha, R. (2018), “Revolutionizing Education: The promise of virtual reality”, Childhood Education, 94(1), pp.40-43
Vera L., Herrera G., Vived E. (2005) Virtual Reality School for Children with Learning Difficulties. Proceedings of the 2005 ACM SIGCHI International Conference on Advances in computer entertainment technology, Vol. 265, pp.338-341.
Hi Marielle,
I think VR in education is a very interesting topic. It could definitely reshape the current educational structure and more societal value can be captured by implementing such technology. As you mentioned, it introduces new ways of learning. While reading through your article, the question that came to my mind is whether physical schools would even be necessary if VR were to be implemented on a large scale? Would teachers still be necessary? Of course in the near future, it will only be feasible to have VR glasses as a complement to traditional teaching, but what if those glasses become a standard household item? As a result of the global pandemic, we have already witnessed that full online education is feasible today (at least in the Netherlands). I can definitely then picture VR glasses to eventually substitute all traditional learning methods. I think it will be interesting to see what possibilities will arise from VR in education. Thank you for your post!