Slow adoption of VR in education

A follow up on a blog written in 2016 on slowness of VR penetration in education with some discussion on potentialities for Vocational Education.

BBC has a good summary from the business point of view on 'What went wrong with VR?

Reasons reiterated by livemint as to difficulties with headsets, costs and availability of relevant VR content. Fortune magazine has a similar article, discussing the issues in some depth.The main challenges are costs of hardware and software development.

From the vocational education perspective, the main challenge is to provide authentic learning experiences. VR has a role, as evaluated recently through two of the sub-projects on the e-assessment project. In these projects, VR was used to support novice learners with learning welding skills and pre-trade training carpenters with acquiring 'safety' awareness.

The challenge with both sub-projects was maintaining authenticity. Even though students were new to the trade, small differences between virtual and real could be discerned. Leading to inconsistencies of 'object behaviour'  as described by Fowler. The specialised aspects of vocational learning require constant updating as equipment and contexts change, adding costs to the already expensive investment in developing VR scenarios. Trying to maintain currency is therefore a continual cost to ensuring VR does not appear to be 'dated'. Humans have learnt from birth, how to gauge authenticity in the environments they interact within. Many of the signals denoting authenticity are tacit and individualised leading to a wide range of aspects ot consider when developing authentic VR environments. With applications exampled by gaming, slight inconsistencies can be waived as the gamer accepts the 'fictional' aspect of the VR environment they have entered. Applying VR to authentic lived worlds is therefore a much more daunting challenge.

Therefore, still work to be done to bring VR into education. There are promising advances and increase in computing power can only improve authenticity of VR experiences. There is a need for VR developers to be cognisant of the human experience, with its myriad variety, to ensure VR experiences support learning outcomes.