Whether you admit it or not, education is one of the foundational elements of our society. As such, it is all about sharing and expanding knowledge in the most efficient ways (not necessarily traditional school-college-university path), and we can take advantage of the new technologies to reach the goals. This makes education a perfect case for testing Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality solutions.
While education is treated with utmost seriousness, it is not without its issues, namely the limited availability of educational services and lack of trained personnel. Besides, there is a huge problem with people who have limited physical abilities or who live in places that are hard to reach. Due to all these reasons, implementing AR/VR tech into the education system makes so much sense for us at the APP Solutions. (IMHO.) Let’s talk about it.
How does VR/AR fit in the Education System?
The easiest way to describe the potential impact implementation of VR & AR can make in the education system is to condense it to four words: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.
The education system needs new technologies in order to stay relevant in the ever-changing world and be effective at realizing its mission. Virtual & Augmented Reality is the next logical step in the evolution of the Education System.
From a business standpoint, VR & AR solutions for education have easily applicable business models, which is always a great selling point.
On one hand, there is no need for figuring out the sustainable business model that will turn into profit in short term. This is completely out of the question because education is a public service and things are regulated rather differently there.
Since figuring out the business model is one of the major problems with AR and especially VR industries, taking it out of the equation leaves much more time to figure out the best possible content. However, that’s where the stakes get extremely high.
There is a lot of responsibility to be assumed in terms of developing a quality AR / VR education content that will effectively serve its cause. Making educational content is much longer and it’s a much more intricate process that requires tight collaboration and flexibility, especially when you deal with kids. Not only there is a need to create accurate content, but it also must be appropriate to a target audience.
It takes more than composing a fine recreation of a body functions to make an immersive VR education process – students and their abilities must be taken into consideration and the content must be adapted to that.
VR/AR Industry and Education
When AR / VR technology meets education, it has the potential to be a win-win situation.
The main challenge in the development of custom VR education application is that you have to create many of the elements from scratch. However, it is possible to create apps that give teachers the ability to construct AR / VR applications for educational purposes from building blocks, using accessible toolboxes and templates.
As a side project, it might also push the wider adoption of the VR and AR technologies among people (since people who are using the latest tech for education usually continue using that tech later in life.)
Virtual Reality Education Statistics
97% of students would like to study a VR course.
Education is expected to be the 4th biggest sector for VR investments.
VR in education is predicted to be a $200 million industry by 2020 and $700 million by 2025.
Almost 80% of teachers have access to virtual reality devices, but only 6.87% use them regularly in the educational process
93% of teachers said that their students would be excited to use virtual reality
7 out of 10 teachers want to use VR to simulate experiences that are relevant to the material covered in class