Virtual reality (VR) allows people to be totally immersed in an artificial or simulated environment, while experiencing the environment as real. This happens because the participant has a first-hand or personal experience of the events, distractions are minimized since only virtual images are seen, and the participant can interact naturally in real time, such as by pointing and looking, rather than by using a joystick, mouse, or keyboard. VR can feel so real that some people experience vertigo when sensory inputs to the brain are in conflict. VR systems can include a variety of media such as video, visuals, animation, and audio. In a sense, VR is an extension of simulations that can be created with readily available hardware and software. Commercial flight simulators are examples of this.
A distinctive feature of VR is that learners are an integral part of the synthetic VR world. Users can simultaneously interact with computers in complex ways. Computers can sense body movement and voice commands and respond almost naturally. For example, for teaching students about interior decoration, you could let students walk through a house and allow them to change colours of walls, rearrange furniture, change the lighting, and remove a painting and place it elsewhere. To interface with the virtual world, learners must wear specialized equipment such as body suits, goggles, and/or gloves.
Although most applications are found in the entertainment industry, numerous educational products have been and are being developed. Since VR allows participants to feel that they are in another place in which they can move and look around based on a prescribed set of rules, VR offers incredible educational potential. Imagine how much doctors, army field surgeons, soldiers, firefighters, and law officers, could safely learn in a virtual environment. Abstract ideas, such as the movement of electrons in an atom that cannot be physically presented, can be taught with VR. Since virtual objects can behave as their physical counterparts and be manipulated by the learner, students can experience natural laws such as the law of gravity. Alternatively, learners can experience unnatural laws created by developers. In a virtual world, energy could be created or destroyed. With the ability in VR to manipulate abstract information, the potential exists to improve a student’s understanding and memory of complex ideas.
Learning can be by discovery, experimentation, through guidance using a variety of instructional approaches, or by practice and feedback. The potential for testing in a virtual environment is exceptional. For example, students could virtually perform an operation, put out a fire, or apprehend a thief.
For practical reasons, it can be risky to develop an educational VR system at this time:
- There are few experts in VR design and programming.
- The authoring software is mediocre but getting better.
- Extra equipment is needed for developing and using these programs.
A key to effective VR design is to focus on the potential to teach and learn rather than on the hardware and software tools.
Given the potential of multimedia technology, where is the boundary between computer-based simulations and virtual reality applications?
