iLRN2020 6th International Conference of the Immersive Learning Research Network

The proliferation of virtual reality (VR) applications in education is opening a future beyond our wildest dreams, creating a wave of excitement and acceptance that suggests this technology is the future for education. However, to envision the future of VR in education, we need to understand that VR has been pushing the edge of innovation for over twenty years and that many of those advances somehow seem lost in today’s frenzy to bring to market “new and innovative” applications. One key aspect that we seem to have been left unaddressed is the fact that learning, specially learning for children, is a social activity; Children learn by experience and discovery, and those are enhanced by interacting with each other and their teachers. Part of the lack of collaborative and team engagement activities in VR is due to the fact that consumer VR is associated with a particular platform for VR: Headsets and googles, which are inherently individual systems. However, VR technology is much more than goggles; there are many alternative approaches to build devices and systems to immerse users in virtual environments that go beyond headsets. This is particularly critical in education, in which VR needs to support the fundamental learning environment for student engagement, student interactions among themselves and the teachers, and even more critical, afford longer periods of immersion during daily educational activities.

This talk will first present a wide-range perspective of what VR is as a new tool whether is VR, AR or XR, the options we have today to explore virtual spaces to achieve innovation in education and its potential benefits and limitations when it is integrated in a variety of classroom activities. The speaker will discuss her experiences on developing VR systems and applications and will share her lessons learned on how to quickly determine technology development paths that, although exciting or “cool”, may not yield successful practical outcomes. The talk will end providing a vision on the future of VR applicability as a force of change education and as a result, its potential to become a key innovation technology to improve many aspects of human life.