Well, just a few years ago, virtual reality was a sci-fi concept, but today, we can easily witness the power of VR in transforming many industries, and education is undoubtedly one of them. Virtual reality is growing at a much faster rate and is making huge advancements. According to some statistics, the total number of VR devices is expected to reach 12.5 million by the end of 2020. Also, the market value of these VR devices is estimated to cross 16 billion U.S. Dollars by the year 2022. These stats clearly indicate that VR is transforming our day-to-day activities and many other significant industries too.
Of course, some industries are using VR way too much, while others could have some limited uses, but the emerging VR technology is proving quite helpful for all. Being a universal technology, VR can be applied to almost any type of domain. So, what about using VR in the education sector? In this era of digital services, technology is playing a significant role. The next generation is being born and raised in the digital world and will evolve to be more advanced than the present generation. They will inevitably resist the existing traditional ways of learning and will try to introduce technology in every sector. So why not include virtual reality to transform the way the students learn and study!
Many teachers and scholars have questioned how introducing VR in education can actually fit within the existing system and can benefit the students. Well, we have got answers to all those questions! Keep reading this article to discover how new and efficient mediums could help students become more efficient and keep them more engaged.
Advantages of Virtual Reality in Education Sector
1. Outstanding Visualizations
VR in education is a great technology tool as it lets users explore different things very efficiently. The users can breeze through different scenarios and could experience different realities seamlessly. It also enhances our learning ability and offers practical ways to emphasize a specific thing by providing great visuals. And well, we all know that a person remembers visuals far more than a written text. So, you can seamlessly create great experiences and can actually learn more efficiently.
2. Appealing Learning Styles
I am sure many of us have heard these words from a student,” I’m bored.” Teachers work tirelessly to engage students through interactive games and projects, group work, public speaking, and a multitude of other avenues. But, there are times when all of their efforts go in vain. So, virtual reality could help solve that issue. The use of VR in education makes class exciting and also allows teachers to bring lessons to life. It also enables the students to experience hands-on, real-life encounters that will prepare them for the future.
3. Eliminate Risk and Safety Concerns
We all know that medical students need to practice their medical procedures without potentially harming a patient. Even firefighters and military personnel need to learn how to respond in dangerous situations without risking their lives. So, VR experiences can help them more profoundly. It can create extreme environments, allowing users to learn without severe consequences. That not only mitigates risk, liability, and injury but also will enable users to more easily train and master procedures, so that, when the time comes, they’re prepared for the real deal.
4. Increases Student’s Engagement
The world today is all about digitization and automation. The people of this digital era, especially the students, try to associate everything with technology and also find it hard while dealing with the existing traditional systems. Hence, teachers today find it hard to create engagement within a class, but VR could help in that too! No matter what age the students are, with virtual experience in the classroom, the students will feel more tempted and engaged. They will feel excited while discussing their virtual experiences and will have more knowledge over that particular topic.
5. Deliver Promising Results
VR technology could not only benefit the students studying in the school but could also make drastic changes in the research field. VR is already making headway in research, especially in the field of medical and engineering. The University of Washington is a perfect example of this where a VR lab is set up in its Health Sciences Library. Also, almost ten hospitals in the Baltimore area use virtual training modules for emergency room personnel. Heavy equipment OEMs are also training some of the employees to use heavy machinery via virtual simulation modules. That’s quite amazing!
6. Effective Training
VR reduces the training cost and provides scalable training sessions. The students and even the tutors could be trained in a much better way with the help of virtual reality technology. You can create real-time situations of the scenarios and can observe the reaction of the user seamlessly with the help of VR modules and training sessions. Also, anything could be learned and tested, and you can even compare the current results with the traditional ones. Moreover, you don’t need to have equipment in real-time to train the users. VR can handle that efficiently.
Also Read: Develop Custom Corporate Training Software
7. Eliminates the Language Barrier
That’s also a significant aspect of education. Many a time, when a student or a teacher travels to a different place, then there are high chances that they suffer because of the language barrier. VR possibly solves that issue. With the aid of virtual reality, you can eliminate geographical boundaries and could help the students from different parts of the world learn while sitting in their classrooms. In addition to this, translation features can also be added to the VR software to help the students achieve their educational objectives.
8. Reduce Workload
VR, besides creating engagement and improving the quality of education, also helps to reduce the workload. Well, we all know, placing a headset on your head and watching stuff flash before your eyes, and learning new information through videos and amazing visualizations isn’t a tedious task. Vr makes learning fun and enables children and other users to learn and study more effectively. Also, when we enjoy doing some work, we do it with more passion, we do it in a more better way, and we won’t feel like we’re doing something painful.
9. Helpful for Specially-abled Students
VR could be an excellent help for specially-abled students and trainers. Studying and learning about things is much harder for the specially-abled people, but introducing VR in education could help improve the scenario. Many robust tools like Nearsighted VR Augmented Aid could help the students with vision problems by controlling contrast, text size, and adding audio comments wherever necessary. Similarly, SignAloud Gloves allows the user to communicate in the sign language within a virtual environment seamlessly.
10. Promote Curiosity and Wonder
Last but not least, VR promotes curiosity in the education sector. Virtual reality is a powerful technology that brings past experiences and knowledge together to deliver a perfect learning experience. Also, the immersive nature of VR brings depth to educational content by engaging the senses and allowing the students and learners to explore to the degree that would be difficult to duplicate within the boundaries of the traditional classrooms, making it a perfect solution for promoting curiosity and wonder.
Also Read- A Complete Guide on eLearning Software Development
Conclusion
In this article, we saw that VR offers endless benefits to the education sector and still has the potential to offer a lot more. It has the immense capabilities to inspire a new generation and is just a few steps away in changing the entire education scenario. So, it’s better to adopt this powerful and amazing technology as soon as possible. And, if you are planning to invest in a technology solution like this, then we can help you out. We, at Matellio, have years-long experience in building secure and cost-effective custom software solutions for a diverse range of industries, and business-verticals. Our custom VR solution could be a win-win option for expanding your capabilities. Reach out to us to book a free consultation today!
