Virtual Reality Technology and Its Implications for the Future of Education

Introduction

It is obvious that one could get an education without actually learning anything. Even though these terms may be used interchangeably, one may well be an intended consequence of the other (Garavan, 1997). Incidentally, learning which in many cases may be the consequence of education can sometimes exist without the education. Looking at things this way, education can then be understood as the formal or informal assembly of strategies and resources to engineer learning. In this regard, education can be seen as a process by which entities transmit value sets, information, and expertise to others, whereas, learning could well be the process of obtaining, expanding on, and sustaining new knowledge, value sets, and skills (Vygotsky et al., 1978; Wells, 1999).

According to Wells (1999), where education is understood as a conscious set of activities intentionally designed and implemented with a view to prompting change in a learner, learning could then be the conscious, or accidental reaction to education, or an unplanned situational stimulus. Using these stimuli from planned or unplanned situations, learners are able to learn concepts, construct knowledge, get experience, and understand situations as they interact, observe, and manipulate objects in the world around them (Tzanavari & Tsapatsoulis, 2010; Wells, 1999). Based on the above, it can be understood that education and learning do not only occur in mainstream or formal settings, but that opportunities for education and learning can exist in mainstream educational settings, training institutes, industry, and beyond (Bandura, 1977; 1986).

In recent times, there appears to have been a notable rise in the quest for accountability on educational processes that have been set out to promote learning. These quests are seeking clarity on the relationships between deployed processes and anticipated learning outcomes. The increasing emphasis on accountability has educational managers of all persuasions on the search to find and deploy relevant technology that can produce the evidence that learning objectives are being met. Due to the desire to cultivate accountability in learning, educators have had to redefine their understandings of learning in light of new technologies and effective teaching methods that will ensure that education does not just meet learning objectives, but also increases student achievement and levels of efficiency among learners in practice (Bauer & Andringa, 2020; Christou, 2010).

In order to satisfy these demands, educational and learning managers have adopted a number of approaches to ensure accountability regarding educational outcomes and improve performance efficiency. One such strategy is the integration of Virtual Reality (VR) into teaching and learning. By introducing this new technology, educational managers intend to be able to situate teaching and learning within authentic and rich contexts that will allow learners to engage in learning scenarios more comparable to real-life experiences of the phenomena being studied (Christou, 2010; Cipresso et al. 2018; Thomas, 2021). With the ability to situate learning within authentic and rich contexts through the use of these technologies, content designers are able to lessen the cognitive load on learners as they will no longer have to mentally situate complex concepts and imagine ideas. Through VR programming, content designers and managers are able to redirect, redistribute, or scale cognitive efforts that would have been invested in trying to situate complexities to rather focus on specialized or targeted core of learning units (Christou, 2010; Franco, 2020; Frederiksen et al., 2019; Tzanavari & Tsapatsoulis, 2010).