New realities for Education

Imagine if the “board game” Operation​™ was revamped in virtual reality (VR). Potentially, there could be 14-year-old ace surgeons walking the hallways of high schools everywhere. Endless possibilities await education as it embraces the current VR and augmented reality (AR) technology wave.
According to Touchstone Research, “around 90% of what we see and do is retained, which is something that has always been missing from education; students do not retain as much information if they are just reading a textbook compared to having more real applications of what they’re learning.”​ ​ Take it from me as I was a formal student once upon a time. With VR and AR, students will see and do their education, literally, with high success, and could facilitate a Dewey-esque revival in experimental education.

The jury is still out on the quantifiable benefits VR and AR would bring to classrooms as the application to education is raw, but the hype is promising. Notable applications of VR technology include, “The World of Comenius project, a biology lesson at a school in the Czech Republic that employed a Leap Motion [hand movement-tracking] controller and specially adapted Oculus Rift DK2 [VR goggles] headsets,”​ which allowed students to investigate biology, anatomy, chemical, and mechanical principles up close in a game fomat.

As seen in the World of Comenius video, not only can we investigate various principles hands-on with VR, we can go to historically significant places like the Great Wall of China or to far off new planetary destinations without leaving the classroom.​ ​ Thanks to Google’s Pioneer Expeditions technology, teachers can take their classes on virtual field trips around the globe.

In addition to VR, AR has been seen to “bring a new dimension to learning…[as] content can be accessed by scanning or viewing a trigger image with a mobile device that creates a subsequent action,” linking you to relevant information in various medias.​ Moreover, both teachers and students can take ownership of such experiences by creating them themselves with the numerous available apps.

It is bewildering to think of how beneficial an AR pop-up would have been for a topic in your high school biology book.

Technological jealousy aside, as a former enrolled student it would have been thrilling to have access to VR and AR learning materials. Anything that can make education captivating and hands-on is an absolute necessity as it involves more students. For example, by including comedy into a lecture on psychology, Sam Houston State University psychologist Dr. Randy Garner found students were more likely to recall statistics as they were interjected with jokes.​ Similar results could be found in other classrooms by applying VR and AR.

With generations growing up with influences from video games and smartphones, infusing education with VR and AR is logical. From personal experience, everyone learns in different ways and adding new approaches will be of benefit. Best of all, it would be very difficult to fall asleep on an AR-interactive book on world history.