VR To Play Vital Role in Children’s Education
Till date, VR has been all fun and games and it has also been utilized in work too. Many gaming companies are investing heavily on VR, considering it is the next platform for games to develop on. But VR is taking a turn and going to places where it was not that expected. Education.
Researchers at the University of Maryland have found that people can remember and retain information better when it is presented in VR. The science behind that is that this new immersive environment could offer new pathways in education, and could thus bring out better outcomes.
Study
The study was conducted on forty subjects who knew to use both computers and VR’s, and also who were comfortable using both the devices. For the study, a “memory place” was created where participants received printouts of well-known faces like the Dalai Lama and Abraham Lincoln.
These pictures were shown to the participants using the memory place format with two imaginary locations. One was an interior room of an ornate place while the other was an external view of a medieval town. Desktop participants had to use a mouse to change their viewpoint, while VR users could just turn their heads to get the whole view.
This method was repeated in various settings with various different people. After a two-minute break, the scene went blank and each memory palace reappeared with numbered boxes where the faces had been. The key was for participants to identify each face by its physical location and its relation to surrounding structures and faces.
Results
Though the PC users could perform the task, VR users performed drastically better. The reason, researchers believe is that the VR adds a layer of reality to the experience that lets the brain build a true “memory palace” in 3D space.
This study is truly an eye opener. 40 percent of the participants scored at least 10 percent higher in recall ability using VR over the desktop display. This technology, if applied to daily education, could change the way students understand and apply information.
Today, the academic world is facing a crisis in choosing the right medium of education. Though some age-old methods are still being practiced, they fail to give out the desired outcome. This new method of teaching can bring the fun in learning, and can also help students to grasp and process information easier.
This also leads to the possibility that a spatial virtual memory palace, when experienced in an immersive virtual environment, could enhance learning and recall by leveraging a person’s overall sense of body position, movement and also acceleration.
