7.1 Introduction
7.1.3 VR in Education
VR has been considered as one of the most potential and promising tools to pro- mote learning outcomes as mentioned above, there is a need to know how to use VR in education and have a quite look about the applications that has been exploited in classrooms with positive effects.
7.1.3.1 VR Related Learning Theories
The prerequisite for an effective educational application based on VR is its peda- gogical approach and the learning theory that follows in order to fulfil the
educational goals and reach the desirable learning outcomes (Mikropoulos &
Natsis,2011). However, the absence of learning theories is common in designing and developing VR products used for education, neither the rational of design nor the user experience being considered. In fact, one of the significant challenges to develop and to use VR in education is understanding the pedagogical and learning theories that should inform the design and use of these VR systems (Fowler,2015).
First, the key theoretical basis for applying VR on education is constructivism. The constructivism suggests to take students as center in learning and teaching, not only asking students to be the active body of information processing and meaning construction, but also requiring teachers to be the guide rather than the instructor of learning (Cunningham & Duffy, 1996). The contexts, activities, and social inter- actions in the learning environment with constructivism keep challenging the learners’ experience stored in their minds, promoting the construction of new knowledge. A series of instructional strategies extended from constructivism, such as situated learning, experiential learning, and collaborative learning, could be applied into the teaching and learning in VR environments since they have the similar features with VR.
A second learning theory related to educational VR is autonomous learning (also known as self-directed learning or self-regulated learning), which refers to a situ- ation where learners set their learning goals, select their learning methods, minor their learning progress, and assess their learning outcomes when acquiring knowledge (Zimmerman,1994). In autonomous learning, the process of students’ autonomic exploring for knowledge construction is more important, teachers playing a guiding role. Therefore, students should use the feedbacks from teachers or environment to understand learning targets and acquire the ability of problems solving. VR technology provides resources necessary for autonomous learning, allowing students to select suitable learning environment based on their learning requirements, to take an unlimited number of repetition and practice, and to check learning outcomes by receiving feedback from environment. However, VR learning environment has a higher requirement for students’self-control ability. Teachers are quite hard to minor students’all learning behaviors in VR environment compared to the face-to-face teaching and observation currently, especially for the students wearing immersive output devices like head-mounted displays.
In this chapter, cognitive load theory (CLT) contributes to the last theory related to using VR in education. CLT is a learning and instruction theory established to coordinate instructional procedures with human cognitive architecture, with a limited working memory being as the center (Sweller,2003,2004). Cognitive load refers to the entire load imposed on working memory during human mental activities, such as problem solving, thinking, reasoning, and so on. Different types of cognitive load distinguished by CLT are associated with different instructional designs and various cognitive load effects. When the amount of mental load exceeds the capacity of working memory, overload will happen and mental pro- cessing activities will be interrupted. The focus of cognitive load theory, therefore, is on recognizing the role of working memory in cognitive process and making sure that the cognitive load is to be controlled within the capacity of working memory.
By multimedia modes, VR technology creates the learning environments with multiple information delivered by different sensory modalities, such as sound, images, texts, tactile cues, and even the simultaneous combinations of multiple information. On the one hand, VR creates a highly realistic world, helping learners to have an immersive learning experience; on the other hand, however, multiple modalities of information and rich stimulation may lead to the working memory overload in unit time and thus influence learning outcomes. Moreover, the impropriate environmental settings and learning scripts may hinder students from devoting their limited cognitive resources into the activities related to real learning objectives. For example, multi-sensory stimulation in VR environments may induce split-attention effect that students only focus on a certain stimulator and thus ignore the real learning objective. Another example related to cognitive overload in VR environments goes to the redundancy effect which may take place when using multiple modalities of information on the same object in order to improve students’ presence and immersive experiment (e.g. the picture and words with the same meanings appearing at the same time). Therefore, the content construction and material presentation of VR learning environments should take account of cognitive theories so as to suit learners’cognitive processing and enhance learning outcomes.
7.1.3.2 Application of VR on Education
At present, the application of VR technology in thefield of education is still on the progress of preliminary attempt, and yet brought into the conventional classrooms on a large scale. However, because of its characteristics of immersion and inter- action, VR has broad prospects for application in different subjects. VR can create various virtual learning environments, particularly for the objects which are difficult to touch or even do not exist in the real world. Based on a number of previous studies, we divide the application of VR technology in education into four types:
observational learning, operational learning, social learning, and academic research.
In the practical application, these four types are not mutually exclusive; instead, they can be combined to use in a same virtual learning environment.
Observational Learning
The learners’movement and behaviors can be extended into a 3D space with VR technology. Learners are able to freely navigate in virtual environments, and obtain initiative feelings for the things inside from different spatial perspectives. Learners could, therefore, have a deeper understanding of the characteristics, construction, and relevant processing of learning targets. In this chapter, the learning activities carried out through multiple spatial special perspectives in a 3D virtual environment is summarized as observational learning. The virtual campus is one of the earliest application areas of VR technology, which stimulates the real campus using the 3D virtual technology (e.g., Sourin, Sourina, and Prasolova-Førland (2006) for the
virtual campus of Nanyang Technological University), and includes four types of virtual space: public space, cooperate space, classrooms, and entertainment space.
The virtual campus can help students be familiar with the campus environment as well as university facilities before they enter into the university, increasing their adaptation ability to university life. The virtual campus also supports synchronous lectures, rich plugins which can be added into the system boosting the interaction between teachers and students (see Fig.7.1).
VR technology can not only stimulate the scenes in real world, but also tran- scend the limits of time, space, and even human’s physical senses to retrieve the scenes that doesn’t exist in current society or to create a new world that is fully imagined. Using VR technology, the physical space can be zoomed and transferred to represent micro- and macro-worlds, making the abstract concepts concretized.
VR technology, therefore, can be applied widely in science education, for instance, learners can learn about astronomy by walking on a virtual planet (Yair, Mintz, &
Litvak,2001) or explore the structures of molecules and cells in the micro-world with VR technology (Limniou, Roberts, & Papadopoulos, 2008). VR technology can also be used while learning arts. For example, students can“go back”to the reappeared historical scenes and events via the VR technology to“visit”the original sites and observe the restored virtual antiques, through which they can learn history by a close observation.
Operational Learning
The VR technology can offer a platform for tactile learning. Using the situated learning environment created by VR, learners are allowed to operate the objects with their own hands, to observe and to experience carefully. Simultaneously, immediate feedbacks for learners’operations and behaviors are provided, helping the learners correct their wrong operations and understanding during learning. More specific, by simulating the real scenes in skill training, VR technology provides the learners opportunities to practice over and over again, facilitating the skills transfer into the real tasks, for example, driving training and medical operation training.
Fig. 7.1 Virtual Campus (De Lucia et al.,2009)
Compared with those training which may cost high or exist some dangers in the real world, the VR technology can provide a training platform in a more convenient and a safer way. In addition, when learning to understand some complex concepts, the learners can observe their learning outcomes and examine their hypothesis by operating or controlling the learning objects in the virtual world so as to adjust their original understanding and construct the deep comprehension. For example, the
“Science Space”project developed with NASA’s fund includes a virtual platform called “Newton World”, which can simulate the scenes where there is no any gravity and friction. The learners can launch and catch the balls with different masses via the“virtual hands”, through which they can predict, test, and elucidate the physical phenomena by real operation to learn about Newton’s law of motion and the law of conservation of energy.
Social Learning
The social learning under VR environment refers to a more extensive realm in which the learners can study through the interaction and cooperation with others in the simulated social scenes. 3D virtual environment provides a multi-user virtual environment where the teachers and students are able to conduct social learning activities, highlighting its characteristic of high interaction. Therefore, VR tech- nology is considered to be suitable for distance education as it can overpass the limits of physical distance. The students can participate in the real-time class interaction and complete the group discussions through the multi-user virtual platform. And with that, they can feel as they are in a class physically and also have some senses of belonging to the group work. VR technology can not only facilitate the cooperation among different learners in multi-user virtual platform, but can establish the connections between the real learners and the virtual avatars, pro- moting the information exchange and interaction in more abundant social com- munication ways, including verbal and non-verbal modalities.
Scientific Research
Currently, the VR technology also has great importance in the scientific research for some disciplines in addition to its application in teaching. Many academic insti- tutions all over the world have had established the VR laboratories, especially in the science areas. The VR technology is capable to simulate various science and engineering environments conveniently, thus greatly decreasing the cost and risk of conducting experiments in real laboratories. In addition, the VR technology can stimulate or create some scenes and effects, which cannot be achieved in the real world, through which the experiment conditions can be manipulated and controlled flexibly. For example, in medical research, VR can visualize the inner organs and make it accessible for the researchers to “operate” some virtual nervous tissue (Morehead et al.,2014).