How Extended Reality is Revolutionizing Education: A Deep Dive into Immersive Learning

Extended reality (XR) is a term that covers several related technologies:

1. Virtual reality (VR)
2. Augmented reality (AR)

These technologies are all changing the way we think about “education.” Read your favorite ed-tech blog, and you’ll hear about radical new approaches to pedagogy based largely on the rise of XR. The only problem is that when we talk about changing “education,” it is usually a proxy for changing “educational tools.” 

In the example above, extended reality is used to replace “educational tools,” which doesn’t capture the spirit of the changes being implemented. There are huge opportunities ahead for the sector.

The idea behind XR suggests that the “real” world will soon be less about what is actually in front of your eyes, and more about what is graphically rendered in goggles. I agree with that thesis and suggest that it will amplify human learning experiences to the next level. 

The missing building block isn’t about how to create more opportunities for learners to study with headsets — it is also about creating a new 1:1 model that better reflects the neuroplasticity of our brains.

Understanding Extended Reality in Education

Extended Reality (XR) is a term that captures all immersive technologies — primarily Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR).

VR creates a fully immersive digital environment you can interact with — typically through a headset that replaces your view of your physical environment with a purely digital one.

AR, however, overlays or adds digital information on top of the real world, typically viewed through a device like a smartphone or smart glasses. It doesn’t replace your physical environment. Seeing and interacting with Pokémon in a real-life grassy park is an example of AR.

XR technology represents a significant leap forward in educational technology, with powerful implications for teaching and learning.

For VR in education, developers have created VR field trips, immersive lessons that allow students to experience being virtually “on-site,” or interactive experiences that allow students to manipulate virtual objects as they would in a physical learning environment.

AR in education works a little differently. With AR, students can transform a standard text or image (say, of a cell structure or particular molecule) into a 3D, manipulable object.

The Benefits of Immersive Learning

Extended Reality — which refers to all applications on the Virtuality (i.e., virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR)) continuum—can lead to improved academic performance.

Here are some specific reasons why XR technology enhances the learning process:

1. Increase Student Engagement: Today, it’s hard for standard K–12 or university classrooms—built with immobile desks—to compete with the prospect of escaping reality. Even business meetings drown in the anticipation of the coming lunch break. When you’re actually experiencing a new visual, it’s hard not to pay attention.
2. Greater Student Participation: XR replaces homework with real-world experience. Everyone gets to be “the smart kid” when they have first-hand knowledge of something.

As destitute and poor as some children arrive at schools, many are already fabulously wealthy—not in coin but in experiential, nontraditional knowledge. Communities, governments, and institutions should do all in their power to ensure that this gold mine is not left to waste.

1. Immersive Learning Experiences: High retention of materials taught during class comes from using the visual and kinesthetic learning styles. “A recent study conducted by the University of Maryland found that students in its program remembered more than 1.25 times more information, more accurately, when using a ‘Flashcard Memory VR’ learning system than their non-VR peers,” the study states.
2. Active Learners Learning More by “Doing”: In baking, cooking, and cooking from memory, “doing” creates better “teaching”—and “learning it” the first time means that you never forget it. Today, learning isn’t just “reading and writing with a pencil and paper”—but instead, is becoming centralized around conversations, voices, moving fingers, haptic motor skills, moving, and waking around (not necessarily in the same order).

An enriching school day can transform a previously boring night into several or more continuous hours of restful sleep, above average to better health, and a healthier brain more capable of retaining information—additionally, the basis of theoretical knowledge acquired in released state Common Core Standards becomes more of a reason for parents to unexempt their children from “opting out” of taking more difficult and highly mathematically rigorous, mind-boggling, and advanced science and math classes (up to AP Calculus AB/BC and AP Physics in 3- and 4-year public high schools. Exceptions are few.).

1. True to Life: AR/VR/MR learning games and applications are based on real people, events, and objects. The player is the learner. The learner is the designer and application engineer on a future XR team near you.

Innovative Teaching Methods with Virtual Reality

 

Extended Reality (XR), including virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR), promises to revolutionize traditional teaching methods and classroom dynamics.

Traditional teaching methods often involve passive learning; students sit in classrooms and listen to lectures, read from a textbook, and take notes. XR changes all of this by giving students hands-on, active learning environments where they can engage with subject material. 

This not only helps them to understand complex materials or concepts better, but it also makes learning fun, which can further help to make otherwise dry academic subjects more interesting to students.

But perhaps one of the greatest benefits VR has for education is that it lets you create and manipulate 3D images within a certain environment or space. XR gives students the opportunity to explore and manipulate images this way. But it also has great social learning potential, too.

For example, think of a virtual classroom that an instructor creates in an education portal where any student can enter and manipulate shapes, mathematical equations, and so on. 

Also imagine that this space can be created and invites sent to any student – anywhere in the world. XR creates these kinds of immersive learning environments where students are given an in-the-room presence, can work with each other on projects, discuss learning material and more, all in real-time.

This adds significant value in overcoming a perceived barrier to accessing a good education. It helps level the geographic playing field for a change.

Case Studies and Success Stories

Many schools are beginning to successfully implement Extended Reality (XR) technologies.

For example, the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts uses XR to allow students to create immersive storytelling experiences within the film and media programs. The college has taken a comprehensive approach, integrating immersive content at several levels. Students across multiple disciplines are using technologies like virtual reality (VR) to tell stories in a new way and creating narratives inside three-dimensional space. In addition to thinking about a story element in the traditional way, students can now use more technical tools to translate that creative work effectively.

One of the most exciting and impactful examples comes from an institution in the K-9 arena. At the New York City-based School of the Future, the administration enhances the curriculum surrounding traditional elements of standard content areas like biology or history through a partnership with Magic Leap One. Their educational proprietary tool, Dissection Matrix, offers a completely new media format to students, so they may dissect 3D renderings of human body parts or ancient artifacts right on the desktop at the front of a classroom.

Feedback from the students is pretty much what one might expect them to share about their experiences. They are excited about the information they are consuming like never before. The interactive element increases engagement, and while most of the feedback supports this validation, the two institutions have seen the frequency of student perception about comprehension of content increase significantly. The most consistent feedback among faculty has been the increase in the number of students who now raise their hands to answer LAMA (look at my answers) responses during the school day.

Data about student performance theories that have been derived through valid surveys supports this transformative theory. After surveying four hundred Sunday, May 9, University of Maryland students, researchers published feedback from students that data shares that 20.2 percent of meeting participants will learn more about what they perceive to be primary pain points when delivered in an AR format.

As humans, we are wired to think about solving problems in patterns, and as problem-solvers, we will always be more effective. However, by learning artificial information through tools that support human perception like an XR-powered AI tool, the increase in fluency with retention will naturally augment the learning process.

California Northstate University has deployed a communication program that is designed to foster teamwork, bridging the community through new formats of media. USC and CNU both have preparation programs that use VR technology and are focused on sharing media with students. Addressing their peer audiencesThrough XR-powered technology, students are bridging the gap and taking steps toward more effective communication walls.

Challenges and Considerations

The adoption of extended reality (XR) technologies in schools offers a transformative opportunity for education. Some of the most significant problems that must be solved for schools to widely and effectively adopt XR technology are:

1. Cost: XR technology is expensive and schools lack money. Many people will tell you that schools waste a lot of money, but very few schools complain that they have too much. The cost of developing an XR program at a school on the scale of 1:1 laptops would be substantial. Factoring in the cost of hardware, software, and the necessary projects to connect the technology to the educational content of the school. The cost of taking the school wireless and internet-based infrastructure to handle the load of hundreds or thousands more devices.
2. People hate change: Teachers, even tech-loving teachers, are pretty mistreated by new technology in most schools. Everyone who reads about the future of education should be aware of the idea of SAMR (substitution, augmentation, modification, redefinition). At best, in the average school, most technology is used for substitution or augmentation. Only in tech demo schools does modification or redefinition play much of a role yet. Teachers have been sold the idea in countless professional development presentations that the new thing is here. The new thing has all the modifications and redefinitions that you have been waiting for tucked neatly into it. Then … they are shown how the new thing can be a digital textbook. Seen this movie before.
3. Inequities persist: As seen over the last 15-18 months, not all children in America have access to a home computer and consistent internet. This has arguably made the educational circumstances of the most at-risk youth in America worse. This should be enough to scare anyone from feeling that we are ready for full-time 100% digital education, regardless of the rosy picture that politicians and journalists paint about the recent past.
4. Crappy educational games: Schools need to help develop educational games and game-based platforms that students would want to play.

Extended reality (which I’ll refer to as XR for short, and includes all virtual, augmented, and mixed reality) offers the potential to acclimate students to [learning experiences, and to engage students with those learning experiences in a way that a reading or traditional lecture never could.

• Are you a visual learner? Okay, Google: show me a life-size 3D Ethiopian geʿez so I can walk around it.
• Are you a kinesthetic learner? Get hands-on practice by loading some large dinosaur fossils into a car yourself (virtually).

XR has the potential to transform every learning experience students have; beyond simply promoting better student retention, how much more transformative might student DS knowledge be with extended reality (as mediated by this GSuites 3D viewer, iOS Adobe app, and Google Science Journal) in general?