PYONGYANG, NORTH KOREA - SEPTEMBER 7, 2018: Students use virtual reality headsets and laptop ... [+]
Virtual Reality (VR) has shown its incredibly immersive potential in arts and entertainment, but can it be an equally powerful, and cost-effective, educational tool? In part one of this article we heard from Scott Likens, emerging technology leader at PwC, discussing a recent report by the analyst that found VR can be faster, more effective, and more engaging than classroom learning or digital training exercises, at least when used to teach ‘soft’ human skills such as diversity and inclusion.
To dive deep into the educational capabilities of this technology, I talked to Dr. Anna Carolina Muller Queiroz, researcher at Stanford University, to find out about her research into schools, and the effects that VR can have on childrens’ ability to learn and their confidence to gain new skills and self-belief.
Virtually proficient
Dr. Anna Queiroz is a post-doctoral researcher at the Lemann Center at the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University and also at the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University. Alongside PwC’s report, Dr. Queiroz gave me a more comprehensive picture of VR’s effectiveness as an educational tool, and offered some fascinating insights from her own research. Dr. Queiroz runs two research studies at a middle school in California using students from sixth to eighth grade (ages 11-13) to compare the effectiveness of computer-based learning and VR on their conceptual knowledge.
The findings of these studies certainly lend credence to PwC’s report, and show that VR is particularly useful when teaching certain skillsets. “[The students’] increase in learning was about the same from both experiences, but the students using VR showed a higher increase in self-efficacy than students using just the computer,” says Dr. Queiroz. Self-efficacy can be defined as a person’s belief in their ability to perform well in certain tasks, or as Professor Albert Bandura of Stanford puts it: “People with high assurance in their capabilities [high self-efficacy] approach difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered rather than as threats to be avoided.”
The increased self-efficacy seen in the VR learning exercises resonates with PwC’s findings of enhanced confidence when using VR, but that is not the only similarity between the Stanford studies and PwC’s report. While Dr. Queiroz first thought that students in the VR group would be more distracted “because when we are talking about conceptual knowledge... lots of stimuli can be distracting and cause interference,” but the immersion of VR turned out to be more engaging than expected. “In the second study the VR students actually recalled more information than students on the desktop, which was new for us and very exciting,” says Queiroz. This also reflects PwC’s report that VR allowed for less external distractions such as emails and notifications - apparently the internal mental chaos of a teenager is also not enough to distract from a VR experience.
Discontented
These findings are heavily caveated, however, by the limited availability of VR in real-world conditions. Dr. Queiroz explains: “The increase in self-efficacy was very nice to see, but temporary, and students also forgot a lot of what they learned in-between sessions. For us that indicates that having several sessions is important to maintain those gains.” The problem with using VR regularly is that there is simply not enough content to consistently use VR without repeating the exact same experience. “There could be only one or two programs available for your purpose,” says Dr. Queiroz, “if we can give them [new] experiences my hypothesis is that we would see more persistent results and we would have more engaged and motivated students.”
Increased interest in VR (particularly for professional applications), less expensive hardware technology, and recent “work towards an agnostic platform with uniform languages between devices,” says Dr. Queiroz, are all helping to create standardization and encourage more people to develop VR content. Likens also recognizes this issue, pointing out that “there’s a cost bottleneck around creating VR content” due to the equipment and specialist skills required, but he points out that there are “a handful of VR start-ups focused on developing new trainings across industries” that are driving new interest in the field.
Accessibility boost
The radical changes that Covid-19 have forced upon businesses and schools alike may be the trigger that VR needs to prove its worth. While currently more limited in education, in a professional context Dr. Queiroz notes that “[VR] is very scalable, you can use one experience thousands of times with different people,” and more innovative applications of VR are attracting further interest in the field.
Likens shares this optimism, and predicts that “as the cost of equipment continues to fall and training content becomes more accessible, I anticipate that businesses of all sizes will use VR training and perhaps we can see more VR in schools as well.” As an advanced emerging technology, VR is perhaps the most tangible and easy to grasp for the layperson, and its potential to change learning practices is certainly compelling. In the post-Covid world, where distanced, digital environments are under huge demand, remote work and remote learning could benefit from a VR-powered boost.
