As virtual reality grows increasingly bullish in today’s education market, the key question for educators now becomes “Is it really worth it?”
In a well-attended SXSWedu conference session entitled “Will VR really impact student outcomes?” this topic came under long-deserved consideration. The scholarly panelists included Eric Sheninger (Fellow, ICLE or International Center for Leadership in Education); Jennifer Holland, (Senior Program Manager for Expeditions and Classrooms, Google); Elizabeth Lytle, (Director of Education and Product Experience for zSpace); and Rebecca Girard, Science chair, Notre Dame High School, Belmont CA).
Sheninger, who I’ve often noticed takes on the role of the naysayer or “critical friend” at educational conferences, delicately warned about the current tendency to view “VR as a miracle.” Too much time is spent, he suggests, merely “exposing students” to it. And too much effort is expended on excitedly identifying “what is possible” with this new technology. He suggested we need to look deeper and think more effectively about virtual-reality as it will play out in schools. “We need to take a critical lens about this. We can’t let this become another gimmick,” he argued.
Next, Google’s Holland spent her time explaining how the idea of Google Cardboard and Expeditions got its start, describing some of the undeniable successes they have had internationally with this low-level virtual-reality implementation. Then, Jennifer Holland provided a rapid run down on the highly interactive version of ‘desktop’ virtual reality now promoted by zSpace, helping attendees get a glimpse at what commercial success looks like in the hard-to-penetrate education market. Girard, a teacher and science department chairperson, closed the event by describing how her school implemented virtual-reality in classroom settings. She provided this padlet showing some of the knowledge that they’ve been gathering over the last two years. (By the way, this padlet site is instructive. It is a fairly representative example of how teachers curate information about virtual-reality to gather and store their own thinking, while sharing their findings with others.)
What About Outcomes?
These last two speakers, Holland and Girard, together attempted to answer the key question: “Will VR really impact student outcomes?” They highlighted some of the ‘observed’ benefits for students when using virtual-reality in the classroom:
- deeper questioning
- a better sense of scale
- conducting experiments not possible due to safety, distance, or time constraints
- increased motivation
- learning that is extended outside of the classroom
- better comprehension of concepts
Although these observed benefits represent only low-lying fruit, and are typical to most informal studies and industry-sponsored case studies, they still remain informative. The most interesting refrain coming from students and teachers is the notion of “deeper questioning”, a theme we have heard echoed for the last seven years in other related 3D visualization studies
This presentation definitely adds to our collective understanding of the role and benefits of virtual-reality in the classroom, yet some interesting presentation missteps were also apparent. These mistakes are certainly instructive to our DD readers, especially if you’re serving with a business interest trying to move into the virtual-reality arena within the education market space.
First, one of the speakers muddled the differences between augmented reality, virtual-reality, and mixed reality and proceeded to confuse the audience, both during the session presentation and the question-answer session that followed. Confusion spread like wildfire throughout the audience, and even afterwards, some folks told me that they were more confused after they left this session than before they entered it. A second slip up, a mistake which I notice occurs frequently in corporate marketing efforts, is to feature a teacher from a parochial school environment in the live presentation.
Typical “public school” educators have a difficult time relating to (and transferring ideas from) an educator representing a well-funded, homogenous private, parochial, magnet, or specialty school. Although these types of schools are easier to leverage for pilot projects and for corporate communications, these types of schools carry less weight in communicating effectively to public school teachers and the general population, who often perceive these institutions as distinctly different from and more advantaged than their own schools.
These are good things to know. But back to the basic question” Will VR really impact student outcomes? Based on this panel, the future is promising, but educators remain wary. And we simply have to afford more and better research. –Len Scrogan
