E-Learning through Virtual Reality
The e-learning industry is getting revolutionized with each passing day many fold. With the advent of modern smart-phones and tablets the accessibility of portable devices has become extremely easy for the learners. Those days are long gone when students would have to log in from a specific desktop at a particular time to access the course material. Courses for preparation of technical exams such as CAT and UPSC have taken an interactive form and morphed themselves to suit the modern educational setup. The concept of mobile learning completely transformed the educational philosophy by making it more convenient and increasing the chances of a student going through the complete topic at once and thus multiplying the chance of having a bulletproof comprehension.
This article focuses on how using virtual reality in educational courses will open up a universe of possibilities for learners and educators alike. So let’s get one with it:-
• Greater immersion into content
Virtual reality in its most basic form involves the user being submerged into the experience they are witnessing. This property of the format gives it high immersion into the created content that guarantees higher concentration and gives new facets for experimenting with the content. Research has proved that visual impulses have a better chance of being retained by the brain and thus the tsunami of stimulus, accessible by the use of this device, can be put to phenomenal use in the education sector.
• Requirement of an environment
Most of the times even the feature of portability that the modern e-learning interfaces have is not enough as the environment that the students are in does not allow them to pay proper attention. Due to the high immersion property of the virtual reality devices any environment that the developers create will completely engulf the two major senses of sight and sound of the learner thus providing higher retention capabilities. The visualizations and sound impulses offered by the devices would help the students to pay their undivided attention.
• Moving physically and its benefits
Interactions which are physical in nature have a greater impact than any visual impact can have. The creation of a muscle memory is one of the hardest things to do as it requires practice and not once or twice but numerous times. This type of memory can be understood by the example of riding a bicycle, once you’ve learn how to ride a cycle even if you don’t ride one for years and then try again it will take only seconds for you to get acquainted to the device again. This shows us that the retention time of memory established in such a manner is freaking epic.
Some of the thoughts that work against the virtual reality phenomenon are factors such as price of the devices as the headsets that the interface uses are still pretty costly. Another factor is that these devices have not been adopted at a widespread level. It’s not that portable either as a lot of wiring is involved when using a high functioning virtual reality device and last but not the least prolonged use of these devices can cause nausea and motion sickness. All these factors aside, the fact still remains that topics such as trigonometry and algebra can be taught with next level visualizations which would cause a revolution in a student’s comprehension capabilities.
