Student Perspectives on Virtual Reality (VR) in the Classroom
Technologies like virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), especially for Gen Z students’, provides avenues that allow them to engage in a social, collaborative, and active learning environment.
VR, especially when combined with storytelling, enable the student to participate in the story, develop empathy to experiences outside their current realm of understanding and fully immersed in their learning.
“Shifts in students’ learning style will prompt a shift to active construction of knowledge through mediated immersion.”
- Chris Dede, Harvard Graduate School of Education
While there’s much hype around the use of VR in education, how are teachers using this emerging technology in the classroom? What do students think? Those are just some of the questions Foundry 10 asked teachers and students in their VR in Education Pilot Program.
Foundry 10: Students & VR Research
In 2015, Foundry 10, an educational non-profit based in Seattle, launched a pilot project to study the impact and student sentiment towards the use of virtual reality in their classroom and curriculum. Foundry 10 reached out to educators interested in utilizing VR in their classes and provided them with headsets.
In total, 1,351 middle and high school students enrolled in the pilot program from 6th to 12th grade. Overall, this pilot project put VR into the hands of students at 40 schools and community centers worldwide. The majority of the participants were middle-grade students (7th and 8th grade). Students were given surveys both before and after the pilot program to record student perspectives and opinions on educational VR.
Here are some of the critical student takeaways after their experience with Virtual Reality:
- Most students were interested in both the consumption and creation of VR content. This study suggests that VR can play a role in constructivist (self-directed) learning experiences.
- The most positive student sentiment centered around history and science content as the subject matter areas where they saw the most viable and relevant virtual reality experiences.
- Virtual reality was a new experience for all of the students, so initially, there was a lack of understanding of what to expect regarding VR technology, experience, and content.
“I am an extremely visual learner, so my hope is that virtual reality will help me visualize whatever it is I need to learn about.”
— High School Student, Foundry 10 VR in Education Pilot
- The primary cause of negative sentiment among teachers related to the lack of support from school administrators or their school IT services during the VR pilot program.
- Students reported that the cables impeded having a genuinely immersive VR experience. They also felt that this type of experience should be made more available to more students (which is very on-brand for Gen Z).
- Teachers reported that the use of VR in an educational context should be “explicit in its purpose, especially since VR can blur the line between what is real and what is someone’s perspective.”
“Virtual reality can help express your creativity and help students learn how to react and communicate in situations.”
— High School Student, Foundry 10 VR in Education Pilot
- What constituted an “interesting VR learning experience” varied by the student. For some rural students, a VR subway experience was a valuable experience. For others, visiting the Amazon jungle or Great Wall of China was perceived as a relevant learning experience.
- One very crucial point raised in the Foundry10 report was the vital role that content creators and VR developers play regarding media literacy and creating experiences deemed factual.
Using VR As Constructivist Learning
Students at St. Kieran’s, a school in the Irish town of Broughal, recently went on a field trip to Clonmacnoise, a nearby site with historic ruins. Nothing unusual or exceptional about that, right? This sort of thing happens in schools around the world. What makes this school field trip surprising is what the students did when they came back to the classroom.
The students, part of a virtual reality pilot program in Irish schools, used the MissionV platform for creating a virtual model of the Clonmacnoise in OpenSim and then viewed it using Oculus Rift headsets.
An essential element of course design that is overlooked: designing opportunities (both digital and analog) for students to create social bonds (through interaction) is equally as important as the course content or technology used in a project-based learning activity.
The theory of constructivist-based learning, according to Dr. Seymour Papert, “is grounded in the idea that people learn by actively constructing new knowledge, rather than having information ‘poured’ into their heads.”
In this VR Clonmacnoise example, these 10–12-year-old students utilized both technology (maths, scripting, 3D modeling, programming), creative (archaeology, history, design) and social skills (project management, collaboration, face-to-face interaction) in a constructivist-based project to create a constructivist-based virtual reality experience.
“You want students to wrestle with content. You want to present as much truth as possible; at the same time, you want them to put that truth together.”
— Teacher, Foundry10 VR in Education Pilot
Moreover, constructionism asserts that people learn with particular effectiveness when they are engaged in constructing personally meaningful artifacts (such as computer programs, animations, 3D modeling, creating spatial environments in VR/AR or building robots).”
Next Steps: VR in Education
There’s no shortage of examples of how VR (and augmented reality) are used in the classroom. However, what the Foundry 10 study shows us, there is still much work to do and many questions to be asked before VR/AR become more widely adopted in classrooms.
We already see more university-level research into developing mixed reality experiences, new interfaces, knowledge dissemination and research being conducted by and for a new generation.
“I first thought that the world wasn’t ready for this. But seeing what VR is doing and the impact that it could have in the education system seems amazing and I think the world is ready.” ”
— High School Student, Foundry 10 VR in Education Pilot
For example, the Immersive + Interactive Virtual Reality Lab (IVRL) at Northern Arizona University (NAU) is offering new programs built around providing research opportunities for students interested in creating and developing virtual reality and augmented reality technologies.
We are still in the nascent stages of VR, but one thing is clear: bringing any mixed reality experiences into the classroom will require collaboration between educators, VR developers (content and hardware) and students.
Read more about the study over on the Foundry10 VR in Education project page.
