Educational Uses of Virtual Reality Technology.

TLDR

Educating children for an information society is critical, requiring lifelong learning and a flexible workforce, and VR is proposed as a major advance to support this education. The paper proposes VR technology as a major technological advance to support education of children in an information society. VR enables students to visualize abstract concepts, observe events at atomic or planetary scales, and interact with otherwise inaccessible environments. Programs introducing VR to students and teachers have been established, academic research programs have been developed, and some public schools are evaluating the technology.

Abstract

Educating current and future generations of American children to live in an information society is a critical issue. It is compounded by the recognized need to provide life-long education for all citizens and to support a flexible workforce. Virtual reality (VR) technology has been widely proposed as a major technological advance that can offer significant support for such education. There are several ways in which VR technology is expected to facilitate learning. One of its unique capabilities is the ability to allow students to visualize abstract concepts, to observe events at atomic or planetary scales, and to visit environments and interact with events that distance, time, or safety factors make unavailable. The types of activities supported by this capability facilitate current educational thinking that students are better able to master, retain, and generalize new knowledge when they are actively involved in constructing that knowledge in a learning-by-doing situation. The potential of VR technology for supporting education is widely recognized. Several programs designed to introduce large numbers of students and teachers to the technology have been established, a number of academic institutions have developed research programs to investigate key issues, and some public schools are evaluating the technology.