VR technology has become a tool in the education system that can provide students with a much more immersive experience in whatever subject they are learning. This technology has changed the way students have ‘traditionally’ learned in the classroom by giving them the opportunity to engage with immersive learning experiences by feeling physically present rather than simply reading from a book or listening to a lecture. Research conducted by Guido Makransky and Lau Lilleholt has shown that immersive VR learning has improved students’ engagement in the classroom and has been linked to a positive emotion among students to learn (Makransky & Lilleholt, 2018). Although these are positive indications that VR should in fact be implemented more at Lafayette College, there is also concern with the way this technology might intensify students’ disconnection with the real world. The four main contexts that shape VR are technological momentum, industry development as a product, changing forms of education and changing forms of connection and disconnection in the world.
Virtual reality is not exactly a new technology; it has been around as early as 1927, when the Link Trainers attempted to duplicate the reality of an airplane cockpit, and the first head-mounted visual system was designed in 1958 and released in 1961 by Philco Corporation (Pantedilis, 1993, p. 24). Over the past century, VR has gained great technological momentum and has given engineers and researchers a platform to give the public a completely transformed technology from when it was first started. As VR has progressed over the decades, it has become more popularized and prevalent in society, this high demand has allowed for more accessibility of these products at a more reasonable price. “Popularization of rapid prototyping technology, as well as common use of low-cost devices in this industry, has enabled introduction of entity objects, indispensable in simulations, into virtual environments in a relatively cost-effective way” (Buń et al., 2017, p. 383). Because of this popularization and technological momentum, VR has been implemented into other uses besides entertainment and has given itself the leverage to become a tool in educational services. In 1957, cinematographer Morton Heilig created one of the first VR systems called the Sensorama. It was a large booth that intended to stimulate the human’s senses with full-color 3D video, audio, vibrations, smell, and atmospheric effects such as wind, for the purpose of fully immersing people in their film (Barnard, 2019). The Sensorama was not interactive and was not easily accessible as it was nonportable and large, and in its patent, claims to have been “only a few thousand dollars as contrasted with the millions required heretofore for actual life-size physical mock-up simulators which in many ways are not as effective or versatile as the simulator as the simulator provided by the present invention” (Heilig, 1962, p. 4), and this cost of “a few thousand dollars” in the early 1960s equates approximately $50,000 in today’s economy. VR technology, when it was first introduced to society, was not close to as accessible as it is today, both with physical obtainability as well as monetary reasonability. Very few, if any, people would have been able to afford a VR device such as the Sensorama in 1960; however, almost anyone can afford the Google Cardboard and experience an immersive virtual reality. The VR devices that are intended to be used in education at Lafayette College—Oculus Quest 2 and Google Cardboard—are both priced at $299.00 and $15.00, respectively, which are reasonable enough for the college to afford thanks to the technological momentum that has driven this technology upwards in popularization and therefore resulted in lower prices.
The technological momentum of VR has not only made it easier for customers to purchase and access these devices, but has also further developed the VR industry as a product. While VR is a tool to allow humans the chance to experience the virtual world entertainingly and educationally, virtual reality is also an industry, and companies that are producing VR devices such as Oculus and Google intend to make money and promote their products. “It has been estimated that the market for Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) in a base case scenario will reach 80bn US dollars by 2025, including both hardware and software, and that in higher education and the K-12 context there will be 15 million users and annual investments of 700 million US dollars (Goldman Sachs Group 2016)” (Fransson et al., 2020, 3384-3385). These statistics show just how large of an industry VR has become over the last six decades since the educational uses of VR in the classroom will not even contribute to 0.01% of the market earnings. For educational investments, however, 700 million dollars by 2025 is a lot of money being directed towards VR and shows that these devices will continue to be implemented in the future. The sole purpose of having VR in education is to enhance the learning experience for students, but it is also important to note that this technology is part of a large industry, and the corporations that produce these devices and software are going to want to implement them into work spaces such as classroom settings to promote virtual reality and sustain its growth. It is unknown just how long it will take to fully integrate VR devices into education, but from the statistics on the VR and AR market, it is only becoming more popular and schools will most likely continue to invest in this technology in the coming years.
As previously stated, the main reason to have VR in education at Lafayette College is to enhance students’ learning experience by providing more interactive opportunities than traditional learning methods. VR changes forms of education by completely immersing students into what they are learning as a means to motivate students to fully understand it. Guido Makransky and Lau Lilleholt, in their article “A structural equation modeling investigation of the emotional value of immersive virtual reality in education,” researched the potential differences between desktop virtual reality and immersive virtual reality in university education, and how the level of immersion might impact learning outcomes and learning motivation. Their results found that “the increased immersion in the VR simulation leads to greater VR features and usability, and a higher sense of presence. This makes the experience more fun and motivating, resulting in higher perceived learning outcomes.” (Makransky & Lilleholt, 2018, p. 1153). Along with this, Professor Hupe, in his interview, mentioned the usefulness of using VR devices in his Art History classes. While studying a painting, work of sculpture, or work of architecture, Professor Hupe would traditionally show his students 2D images of these artworks on a PowerPoint Presentation, but “students really just don’t have a sense of what it feels to be in that space” (Hupe, 2020). For Professor Hupe, VR helps students approximate the kind of experience they would have if they were viewing a piece of art in person, whether it is the texture of a painting or the way the light shines through a particular piece of art (Hupe, 2020). Professor Hupe also mentioned that he did a student evaluation in the middle of the Fall 2020 semester to ask his students what was going well in the course, and he received responses from multiple students who expressed their love for VR, and that it felt like they were travelling again even though they really were not, and that it had been such an uplifting part of their experience (Hupe, 2020). In the case of Professor Hupe’s students’ experiences with VR in the classroom, it can be inferred from their feedback that, in alignment with Makransky and Lilleholt’s study, these devices have given them a much more fun and motivating way of learning. While Makransky and Lilleholt’s study did not produce findings on whether or not the use of immersive VR improved students’ grades, it raises the question, what constitutes successful learning? Letter grades and GPA have become such an important part of the educational system, especially in college, and students prioritize getting a ‘good grade’ over having an enjoyable learning experience. However, exceptional letter grades do not always mean that a student is learning or engaged. VR gives students the opportunity to be fully immersed in their learning experience without any distractions, and actually retain information by being in a positive environment.
Along with VR changing forms of education, this technology also changes forms of connection and disconnection in the world. VR gives students the opportunity to experience and “visit” places that they may never have the chance to, and therefore provides a sense of connection in the world. For Professor Shulman, who teaches Anthropology & Sociology courses at Lafayette College, VR has been used in his classes to give his students an experiential immersive experience that they probably would not normally have the opportunity to as a student. An example that Professor Shulman provided was having his students experience five minutes of confinement when learning the topic of Corrections (Shulman, 2020). In this case, students become connected and immersed into a world that they are unfamiliar with and are only able to momentarily become connected to it through VR technology. These devices can also be a tool for professors to use VR as a way to replace field trips, which take time and money to transport their students and find time out of everyone’s schedules to make it possible. For students who are looking to study environmental issues, VR can be a great tool to better understand specific ecosystems and their needs versus other ecosystems. For instance, students may be able to experience what it would be like to go to Antarctica and see melting glaciers, across the oceans where dumped pollution is harming underwater ecosystems, or forests that have been torn down and have left wildlife with nowhere to go. Although it would probably not enjoyable to realistically experience these settings, it is the hard truth that students need to see and it can help them understand the desperate state our Earth is in. Being in a bubble at Lafayette College surrounded by greenery and clean air makes it difficult to see that there are many places that are struggling, and VR can urge students to get out of that bubble and make a difference.
Although these are some of the positive effects that VR have in providing students with a deeper connection to the outside world, not actually being present in the real world and instead being present in a virtual world may also provide a sense of disconnection in the world. It raises the question, through implementing VR at Lafayette, are we furthering the progress of a technology that could have long term harmful implications on the way humans interact with each other? We have seen how the phone quickly transformed into the smartphone, which then provided a platform for social media to be introduced to the public, and social media takes up so many people’s lives in the present day. With such a powerful and immersive technology like VR, which is constantly changing and advancing, it is possible that social interactions through VR might increase human-technology-human interactions and decrease human-human interactions. Jaron Lanier, who is considered the founder of VR, turned against the web and in his philosophical beliefs about technology intends to subvert the web world “before it engulfs us all, destroys political discourse, economic stability, the dignity of personhood and leads to ‘social catastrophe’” (Rosenbaum, 2013). However, Lanier’s desire to separate himself from the web did not necessarily apply to VR. In his book Dawn of the New Everything: A Journey Through Virtual Reality, Lanier concludes that the priority of VR should be keeping the human at the center of this technology and to remind ourselves that VR exists to serve people, and its correct use is to ultimately add value to people’s lives rather than celebrate the novelty of technological innovation (Rowley, 2018). In order to make sure that VR is used in the proper way within education, Lafayette College must prioritize the students at the center of VR technology, and ensure that it fosters their learning in a positive and productive way.
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