What should educators expect from using virtual reality in the classroom? How can teachers utilize VR most effectively to kindle young brains? As Jaime Donally has justly pointed out in her novel, Learning Transported, several educators are won over by the wow factor of immersive technologies but they slip to make a personal connection between technological tools such as VR and AR and content areas and learner objectives.
The immersive character of educational VR software adds depth and visual appeal to enriching content, which in turn empowers young learners to engage with and examine, understand, and assimilate concepts that might have been challenging to grasp within a conventional classroom environment.
Using virtual reality in the classroom can be crucial in empowering students to achieve greater depth in understanding conceptually rich subjects. In today’s classrooms and the ones in the future, VR can assist as the ideal technological channel for distributing ideas, inciting the inquisitiveness of young learners, and aiding autonomous and lifelong learning.
From discovering the globe to studying the complex details of the human heart, what VR delivers to the classroom is appealing, immersive, and personalized content furnishes learners with much-needed versatility while seizing difficult concepts, and most importantly, helps educators utilize their time in the classroom more efficiently and productively.
Educators around the world must continue to endeavor for more for their learners and be keenly aware that although the VR experience is a powerful tool, there must be a link between content and curriculum, assessment of that association, while also sustaining a link between learner and educator. That is when education can be fully realized!
·Content is the Key
For VR to be genuinely beneficial in the classroom, developing high-quality content that is aligned with the school curriculum and produces opportunities for independent learning will be a crucial factor. Assuring that learners stay involved, stimulated and excited to learn is one of the toughest challenges that teachers encounter daily in the classroom. In this respect, VR technology can be a reasonable solution by offering learners the possibility to learn experientially, connect with complex topics at their speed, question themselves to explore more beyond the walls of the classroom and track their progress.
VR and educational VR software can be of use especially in this regard because it enables teachers to be a member of the immersive learning atmosphere and track students' growth.
Example - VR solution comes with an easy-to-use content administration system attainable via the web, or an app stored on the Teacher Tablet for use in isolated areas with limited connectivity. The content administration system enables educators to efficiently find structured content drafted to their curriculum, while a proprietary reporting system for teachers and scholars enables them to view important data and analytics.
Hence, with educational VR software in the classroom, educators will be able to dedicate their offerings to bridging individual rifts in learning and help the classroom progress as a whole.
·Deepen Understanding
While VR is exciting and has the necessary wow factors to connect young learners who are products of the digital age, the continued use of VR in the classroom will be driven by its capability to help learners expand their knowledge of complex topics and promote a more helpful form of learning.
Students can benefit immensely from a more profound level of connection with a theory, the results of which may then be quantified via test results. Moreover, research implies that visualization of learning content and studying in a VR setting strengthens the bond between the student and a concept, thereby implying enhanced retention rates, which can only be proven through supplementary study.
·Different strokes for different learners
Where VR scores over other conventional methods towards education are in its adaptability. For example, using virtual reality in the classroom can empower students to learn at their levels of pace and ability, it can also aid in the rehabilitation of kids with Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, assisting to attend to the behavioral and cognitive skills of such junior learners. The adoption and assimilation of VR and educational VR software indicate a much-needed shift away from learning that is often abstract and separated from practice, thus enabling young learners around the globe with passage to an immersive learning experience that is appealing, interactive, and personalized.
·The classroom as the hub of creativity
Teachers are inexhaustible in their endeavor to assist learners to learn to the best of their skills. However, keeping students involved and motivated can be a strenuous task for even the most qualified teachers. That’s where VR factors in, presenting a much-needed helping hand by blowing new life into old topics of education and inspiring learners to judge education not as a chore but as an exciting intellectual adventure.
The core strength of immersive technologies such as VR and AR prevails in the visualization and simulation of knowledge content, foregrounding a sumptuously experiential mode of receiving, assimilating and retaining information. VR allows learners to explore diverse kinds of realities, which is otherwise difficult in a conventional classroom.
Whether it is by bringing classical history to life, virtually deporting students to outer space, or taking them on a wonderful voyage deep inside the individual body, immersive technologies are driving the charge in the conversion of learning and teaching experiences globally.
·Reports and Analytics
VR solely is not a panacea. True efficiency can only be found when a technology like the VR is fitly paired with the curriculum, is localized to any region, and effectively connects students with theories, and teachers with students.
With intelligent analytics, a teacher can trace a student's progress via learning evaluation and generate imminent insights, thus supporting both student and teacher to identify and address rifts in learning.
The objective is to thoroughly comprehend how each student learns and what sort of learners they are intending to assist educators in fulfilling their duties in the most productive way feasible and building a seamless and interesting educational experience in the classroom.
Although scholars will still be obligated to learn reading and literature, mathematics, critical thinking, etc., there will be equivalent stress on developing self-discipline, cognitive skills, and technical proficiencies, the forte of immersive technologies like VR.