Enhancing Education with Virtual and Alternative Reality

 


            Effectiveness in educational methods and tools has emerged as a concern and goal for academic environments and training organizations to enhance educational outcomes (Lee & Wong, 2008).  Alternative reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) provide an opportunity to inject creative learning through immersive technologies to enhance the effectiveness and understanding of education (Craig & Georgieva, 2017).  Through immersive learning, students are taken out of the traditional classroom and transported to a digital world where educational interactions are undisturbed through virtual reality technology.  As students engage in VR and AR educational environments, physical learning environments' distractions become less of a concern.  While the participant may be sitting in a chair in the classroom setting or in the comfort of their home, AR and VR technology transforms the traditional learning environment into a more interactive environment heightening the visual senses and mental engagement of students.  

Trends in Online Learning

While online learning environments' popularity has gained traction for traditional and non-traditional students, current COVID-19 pandemic conditions have forced the online learning environment on many conventional educational settings.  Virtual classrooms have emerged over Zoom, WebEx, and other collaborative video teleconferencing environments to extend student to student and student to instructor engagement.  Online assignments have replaced the traditional physical quizzes and exams with asynchronous discussion boards serving as the platform for student interaction.  Students often migrate to online activities and subjects suitable to their learning needs and delivery methodology preference (Lister, 2014).  Lister (2014) argued student engagement increased with reflective assignments having more relevance to the individual student's personal life.  

Factors impacting integration of AR and VR in online learning

With the recent shift in online learning due to pandemic conditions, engagement among isolated students in a virtual environment is a significant problem in education. By translating the online classroom to an alternative reality and virtual reality-driven environment, students will be immersed in a more captivating learning atmosphere to promote a more enga
ging, interactive learning experience.  

References

Craig, E., & Georgieva, M. (2017, October 31). VR and AR: Designing Spaces for Immersive Learning, EDUCAUSE Review. Retrieved from: https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2017/10/vr-and-ar-designing-spaces-for-immersive-learning

Lee, E. A. L., & Wong, K. W. (2008). A review of using virtual reality for learning. In Transactions on edutainment I (pp. 231-241). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

Lister, M. (2014). Trends in the design of e-learning and online learning. Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 10(4), 671.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Happenstance, repurpose, or rejected failure?

While intent serves as the motivation or driving force for invention and discovery, innovation often results from unwarranted and unintended actions. Many critical and innovative findings resulted from accidents, happenstance, and unintended results.   Serendipity, often defined as the unintended discovery of something good or useful.  While the association of luck may be considered synonymous with serendipity, the concept could be more easily characterized by the observation of reality occurring amid expectations.  When a specific incident occurs in anticipation of a different outcome, acknowledging and observing the reality of the situation can result in discovery despite a biased or expected result.  In Alexander Fleming's case, credited with the discovery of penicillin as a remedy for halting bacterial growth, the discovery resulted from observing the lack of growth of bacteria on a plate due to the presence of a fungal colony (Taylor, 2020). While many erro...
Read more

The Accidental Medical Device

Over the years, the medical community has achieved advancement through carefully planned, tested, and developed methods.  While many industry innovations have directly resulted from a direct solution methodology, innovation has often emerged from the unintended consequences of a deliberate approach to a problem.  The artificial, implantable pacemaker emerged as a critical medical device implementation by the developer intending to use a device to record the human heartbeat. History of Pacemakers In the early 1900s, scientists and medical researchers began studying the impacts and use of electricity to regulate heart rates (Allan, 2003).  Initial implementations of pacemakers proved to be very unwieldy due to their design's complex nature and required operational dependencies.  While useful in concept, the first pacemaker consisted of cumbersome vacuum tubes and needed a direct external power source creating a traumatic experience for the patient and lacked practi...
Read more