Nearly 3000 years ago, the children of Ancient Greece studied reading and writing, as well special topics prioritized by the Greeks such as gymnastics. 300 years ago, Japanese children learned reading, writing, and Confucian ideals in their analogue of today’s primary schools, the terakoya. The basic process of schooling, through which knowledge and skill passes from one generation to the next, has stood the test of time and space. About three weeks ago, however, a group of MIT students were given the task of educating through a new venue—virtual reality (VR).
This year, the Office of Minority Education’s Momentum program, a design program that takes place over the four weeks of IAP, focused on creating educational VR experiences. Participants were tasked with creating a 10-minute educational demo on a topic of their choosing. This assignment forced participants to ask themselves whether the technology that they were developing would become an important component of education in the future, or whether it was just a fad, destined to wither away in the coming years. One thing, however, was certain: VR provides a new dimension to an age-old experience.
One benefit of VR education over more traditional methods is how VR can provide more immersion than simply reading a textbook or watching a video. According to Business Insider, Walmart has already taken advantage of these benefits to provide their employees a more immersive training experience. In June of 2017, Walmart partnered with a VR startup called STRIVR to provide VR training in 31 of its 200 training academies. Scenarios that trainees could undergo in VR included “dealing with holiday rush crowds or cleaning up a mess in an aisle.” In a 2006 study, researchers concluded that “people learned more in the immersive VR system than in the 2-D video system.” Participants in this study learned tai chi moves through VR, demonstrating that the benefits of VR are not limited to job training.
Topics of which immersion is an important component, such as language learning, are also likely to benefit immensely from VR implementation. Imagine you were a student trying to learn Spanish. If you could virtually travel to Guatemala in the comfort of your own classroom, you’d be able to surround yourself with those who natively speak Spanish and put your Spanish skills to the test by performing tasks such as asking for directions. Moreover, the sheer novelty and popularity of VR at this stage piques the interest of students. For these reasons, it seems likely that VR will be introduced into more and more classrooms as time goes on.
For students with disabilities and special needs, VR provides an abundance of opportunities to explore new experiences. According to a 2015 NPR article, Danny Kurtzman of Newport Beach, Calif., who has muscular dystrophy, was able to virtually surf thanks to Specular Theory, a VR company. VR allowed Kurtzman to experience a small snippet of the life of a person without his disease. Moreover, students with disorders such as autism can practice social skills with the aid of VR. If a student were often too overwhelmed by social interaction with actual humans, they may first practice with humans of the virtual world. The sensory experience of VR is one that may differ greatly from that of reality. Jeremy Bailenson, the leader of a Stanford lab measuring the effect of VR on humans, found that “through virtual experiences, we can even reshape our homunculus—a map of the body we have in the brain.” For those disabled students who are disabled in some way due to sensory deficiencies, VR provides a novel and attractive venue for learning.
In recent years, VR technology has become less expensive and more widely available. For just $15, today’s students can purchase Google Cardboard, for example. Given past technology trends, it is possible that the need for VR will eventually be obviated by the introduction of some new and better technology. For now, though, as VR becomes more popular within the general public, so too will it become more popular among educators.