So, you might be thinking after reading the title, how can the technology of Virtual Reality help the field of Education in any way? To resolve that query, we will give you an in depth understanding about “How” Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality i.e. Extensive Reality is bringing a revolution in the way students, teachers and educational institutions adapt this new technology. Let’s see how Virtual Reality is changing education.
How VR is changing education
Virtual Reality has always been associated with gaming, entertainment and content consumption. But now, it is seeing a more practical use. Educational field should be highly dynamic because students should know and grasp the everyday changes and general knowledge. The current education system is a very old form of teaching methodology which is extremely boring and does not engage the students to learn beyond the textbooks. Further, the feedback system between the student and the teacher is almost non-existent. Since an average class of students consists of 35-45 children, a teacher cannot give their full attention towards each of those students and thus the to and fro communication between the student and the teacher, with respect to feedback does not seem to be prevalent.
This is where Virtual Reality brings a change to this dynamic. Virtual Reality allows the students to experience abstract concept in a three dimensional space, and helps them to find meaning of words and links between the concepts. It also transforms the passive learning into technology assisted immersive learning that gives students an opportunity to explore and navigate their subjects, and live inside them like never before.
The Pressing Need for Extensive Reality in Education
After seeing the drawbacks in the current educational system and implementation, it is safe to say that Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality have come in at the right time and can make a huge difference. Virtual Reality has the capability of bringing the outside world into the classroom and vice versa. Certain apps can transport the students into ancient Greece, while some apps can allow the students to share their virtual creations with the world.
One of the major things Virtual Reality excels is in helping the students’ retention. It is proven that visualization and gamification leads to higher concept understanding and improvement in the retention. Virtual Reality environment provides this space where a student can engross and immerse themselves and learn about concepts and ideas in depth. Virtual Reality also provides a distraction free environment. When students are inside the virtual environment, they are far less prone to distractions such as other students, environment and many other negative reinforcements.
Extensive Reality as a whole has no language barriers. For international students, the language barrier often can be a problem, but with Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, studying materials can be easily transcribed and translated to any foreign language.
Extensive Reality has a number of practical applications. Virtual Field Trip is the most common use of Virtual Reality. It provides the ability of virtual visits to distant or physically inaccessible places. The big part of investment in Virtual Reality is directed towards training medical students and personnel. Different trainee programs are aimed to prepare doctors and nurses and simulations help practice different clinical cases and improve skills. Virtual Reality immensely helps in training. Most students say that studying complex material through practical tasks provides a better understanding of the subject. Virtual reality can provide a suitable and manageable environment for any kinds of training. Designing is another area where Virtual Reality can aid design and modelling to progress to a qualitatively different level. This technology allows the creation of 3D models, displaying all details and features, editing, transforming and testing in the virtual environment.
Recently a new concept, called Augmented Reality Classroom has popped up. Teachers are now beginning to use Augmented Reality in classroom exercises, to help their class’s materials along with Augmented Reality features. It engages the students to learn more and motivates them to study even further than the regular classes. Usage of Augmented Reality into exercises helps the teachers to engage with the students in studies by communicating with the 3D environment. Participating in such sort of an activity enables the students to catch their ideas and thoughts for the entire Augmented Reality class and further encourages them to learn the subject.
Through Augmented Reality, is possible to create a 3D model of anything that cannot be understood or be possible to bring into a classroom. This method of teaching works great with casual learners and furthermore it helps other people to get multiple methods for combining hypothetical material into real world concepts. Google Expeditions provides this experience. It gives tours that lets teachers use Augmented Reality in education. With this, users can bring 3D objects into the classroom, then walk around and explore them. These objects can be tornadoes, volcanoes or even DNA. Google Expeditions covers various subjects and offers more than 100 Augmented Reality Expeditions thought the circulatory system, history of technology and the Moon landing.
Now let’s move from Augmented Reality to Virtual Reality. Virtual Reality doesn’t just enhance the real world, but it lets the user to immerse inside a whole new and different virtual environment. Virtual Reality adds the factor of immersion, dynamic environment, sensory stimulation and disconnecting from the real world. Virtual Reality based immersive and experiential learning has the potential to create deeper level of engagement with target topics and in a form of distraction free environment.
Virtual Reality greatly empowers the teachers as well as students. It can be of great benefit to teachers to have a tool such as Virtual Reality at their disposal, which is paired with the right content. Virtual Reality empowers teachers to better understand a student’s connection with the material being taught, to identify the possible gaps in knowledge and to attend those issues in a timely manner. This would make the experience that is much more relevant and that is much more meaningful, for both, the teacher and the student.
Another advantage of Virtual Reality is that, it gives an opportunity to gain real life experience in certain areas which can be difficult or even possible to achieve. Students are encouraged to choose, explore and manipulate and understand subjects in a different way, as compared to the traditional methods of learning and teaching. This is possible as, Virtual Reality enforces the students to be an active participant within the environment, rather than a passive spectator.
Virtual Reality makes learning more FUN! The “I’m bored…” factor from the regular teaching dissipated. Instead of teachers working tirelessly to engage the students, the applications will take on this task, and will make the learning phase more interactive, gamified and group task based. VR can make the class more interesting and more understandable. It would allow the teachers to bring the lessons to life, through which students can experience hands on, real life encounters that will prepare them for the future.
Finally, Virtual Reality creates more memorable experiences. Having an experience of being transported to Ancient Greece, visiting other planets in our Solar System or having a face to face interaction with Bill Gates. No school or educational institution can make this happen, but Virtual Reality can. Children can have the experiences of their lifetime in Virtual Reality.
Utility of Extensive Reality in Education
The current classrooms have already implemented the feature called “Smart Classroom” which involves a smart white board and a projection system which is connected wirelessly to the internet. Extensive Reality can be the next step in evolution of this Smart Classroom. Day by day, Extensive Reality is seeing more prominent and optimal utilization in classroom an educational settings. The format and even the location of learning process could be transformed through Extensive Reality in the years to come.
Using Extensive Reality in the classroom can turn an ordinary class into a more dynamic, engaging, gamified, fun and immersive experience. It also provides virtual examples and adds gaming elements to support the textbook material. As a result, classes become more interactive. Extensive Reality helps the students to remember the information in a more efficient way.
Currently, there have been developed a number of Extensive Reality tools which are directed towards the education sector. Elements 4D is an Augmented Reality application developed for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Through this app, the users can visually see, interact with chemical elements and see their chemical reactions. First, the users need to create paper cubes from special elemental blocks. Then they just need to place the cubes in front of their devices camera to see representation of the chemical elements, their names and their atomic weights. To explore elements, students can bring together two cubes to find out if elements can react, and if they react, they can see their chemical reactions.
Another sphere where Extensive Reality helps is in medical Education. Medical students can improve their knowledge and skills by taking advantage of Extensive Reality. They can create human models that allow medical students to learn anatomy in depth. Extensive Reality provides more training opportunities for medical students with the help of simulations. It even helps in practice surgeries on virtual patients. Human Anatomy Atlas is an app that lets students explore the human body to understand how it works. The application shows 3D models of the human body and allows the students to interact with it. Human Anatomy Atlas provides more than 10,000 anatomical models and some information in seven different languages. The application also has a test bank for quizzing to help students to check and improve their knowledge.
Extensive Reality turns out to be more affordable over time as compared to standard educational materials. Educational materials can be quite expensive and not all schools and educational centres can afford to buy and maintain them over time. Augmented Reality apps to the most require a mobile device. Taking into the account the widespread users of mobile devices, Augmented Reality as compared to other reality spheres will become the most accessible and the most prominent.
Some Common Misconceptions and Myths Around XR
- VR headsets cause nausea and headaches
This is not a myth, but for some individuals this can be true to some extent. Our brains cannot adapt quickly enough to multiple stimuli since all the stimuli are concentrated on the eyes instead of across the whole body. For example, when you walk down the staircase, your feet and legs will feel the pavement step after step, but in VR, only your eyes have the entire responsibility of perceiving changes in height and momentum. This in turn causes some people to feel disoriented and the lack of reference points during rational movements may cause some degree of motion sickness.
However, many iterations towards VR development has happened over the years and this has been fixed. Newer headsets have shorter latency times and reduced lag. This lessens the nauseating effect which is caused by the VR headsets when the body doesn’t feel physical rotations. Improved 6 Degrees of Freedom (6DoF) tracking has also been improved to align the movements of your head with the virtual environment.
- VR Headsets are super expensive
VR headsets used to be expensive back when they were announced in 2014-2015. But now, you don’t need to break the bank anymore. At the max, you need to spend as much as a gaming console. Depending upon your preferences, VR headsets can be as cheap as Rs.700 – the price tag of a Google Cardboard. Other mobile based headsets like Google Daydream View or Samsung Gear VR are priced around Rs.6,500.
If you’re looking for a more immersive option, Oculus Rift is present, which is priced at Rs.60,000. If this is too much of a price tag for you, you can also opt in to get a newer Oculus Go, which is a standalone VR headset which is more like a smartphone and is way more portable than a PC powered headset. This will back you for Rs.24,000.
- VR is a Fad/Gimmick
Generally speaking, inventions and devices withstand the test of time usually when they prove to be useful for a wide variety of people. VR is the ultimate tool for humanity. It has been reported that VR is the last computing platform. Oculus Executive Jason Rubin says that VR is the last computing platform. There have been various computing platforms that have come over time and all of them have opened up opportunities that the previous computing platform did not. Mobile, certainly with GPS, being in your pocket and everything else that would be an example. The thing about VR is that if it really works it is a virtual reality. So anything we can imagine we can simulate in VR. We can simulate anything and because of that, it is unbounded by opportunity.”
Rubin’s points are very precise and accurate of the future to come. There is a reason why companies are investing billions of dollars in creating an industry right now in 2019.
IRA VR
IRA Virtual Reality is an Android Virtual Reality Application which brings Virtual Reality to a smartphone via an Android Application. This is a centralized platform for the Virtual Reality based interactive learning. It features 360 degree educational videos, interactive Virtual Reality for learning, gamified content design, Do-It-Yourself assessment creation tool, progress monitoring tools, generation of performance analytics and through this users can access students’ report card and progress reports for parents.
IRA VR features the following
- Visualization
- Realistic next generation to scale 3D model
- Collaborative visualization
- Interactivity
- Teachers can highlight or interact with various components during session
- Students can perform individual or collaborative interactivity
- Goal oriented
- Learning and assessment mode
- Assessment builder – auto and manual
- Controllability
- Centralized controls
- Monitor student’s view and activities
- Intelligence
- Artificial Intelligence based Assistant
- Gaze based intelligence
- Artificial Intelligence performance analysis.
IRA VR enables the instructor to create their own assessments. These assessments can be override teaching flows by using controls tools. And through this, instructors can track individual’s performance per student. IRA VR gives immense control to the instructor.
At the student’s point of view, IRA VR helps them to learn at their own pace. Students learn more by doing experiential content. They also find learning to be more rewarding as IRA VR gamifies the whole learning experience. IRA VR gives students experience.