Virtual Reality

VR/AR Shaping Future of Education

Education has seen a huge shift over the past few centuries. The overall literacy rate has gone up from 12 to 88 percent worldwide and has also seen growth in a number of student’s enrolment and schools every year. In parallel, our curriculum has also evolved to complement the education growth over a period. The recent boom on the internet has given an opportunity not only for students but everyone who wants to study, by creating a platform for self-study.  At this moment, a debate among scholars around the world arises about “Is traditional classrooms still effective medium in shaping the student’s future?”. The answer to a question may not be NO at present but moving forward the advancement in technology will vanish student from attending contemporary schools and universities. To prove that e-learning started benefiting the student to learn anytime anywhere and most importantly cost-effective.  Current education system puts pressure on students and teachers. Students often don’t understand why they are learning certain things which in return makes class purposeless. They are also under strict timelines which makes them less curious in what’s being thought at schools. On the other hand, teachers are having huge pressure in teaching, planning assessments, grading them, etc. As a result, teachers are unable to give 100 percent individual attention to students.

Having said, What’s the solution to make it interesting for students to be curious? With so much of technology popping out everyday, we must make use of them. VR/AR could be an alternative to the current static education method that has huge scope to change from how we are consuming today. VR/AR can create personalized learning that focuses on student’s individual needs. This could give students a choice of variety in programs, interactive learning, instructional approach to counter issues. This learning experience will give student’s more opportunity to be creative and open student’s imagination, address weakness and create their own preferences. In return, teachers can monitor individual student and maximize their input to everyone based on their weakness. Overall, students can get a personalized interactive learning experience.

Supporting the idea of using VR/AR, a report from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has found that students using personalized interactive learning has made greater progress compared to traditional leaning students. The researcher also backed with papers publishing articles of how positive impact in the brain from receiving information and processing with the help of interactive learning. So, the question arises why it's not implemented in schools? The answer is simple if you need to provide individual attention to each student you need to hire more stuff which is practically impossible. This paves way for new technology like VR/AR to fill those voids and provide interactive learning to students.

Mastering a subject?

Mastering a subject for example maths or physics requires knowledge of past topics. To an extent our system function in that way but for a student to the master he just needs 40 to 50 percent of marks. The remaining 50 to 60 percent remains unclear or unknown to the student. As a result, the student is unable to master the subject to go further. In this way, our current education fails to provide a student with knowledge of the subject and allows him to progress with 40 to 50 percent of the knowledge which he acquired. Grading is not a reliable source of metric to judge once ability in mastering the subject. Schools and universities fail to give feedback to their students to achieve mastery in their field. The way to fix this is by creating a solution to achieve mastery-based learning with personal interactive learning.

Experiential learning engages students, build emotional senses, creates the context for memorization and enhances critical thinking. It basically helps students to learn a thing while doing. With more technology being created immersive technology with VR/AR will redefine education forward. It will redefine our relationship with information in consuming and using them.

VR/AR experience opens new imagination and creative process. As Albert Einstein said, “the only way of Knowledge is Experience”. Through VR/AR technologies we can put students into the virtual learning environments and give them experience in real-time. We can teleport students to Places that are impossible to visit. All the Learning process through VR/AR experience increases the efficiency of retention of knowledge. These technologies can be used to make students collaborate with any number of student’s different students around the world. The personalized, mastery, experiential method will revolutionize education thought around the world sooner or later.