Helsel, S. (1992, May). Virtual reality and education. Educational Technology, 35(5), 38-42.

OVERVIEW

According to Helsel, education is responding powerfully to the notion of virtual reality curriculum. But what exactly is virtual reality?

The debate of what virtual reality (VR) is and how it is defined is lively. For Helsel, virtual reality is a concept that promises to open a floodgate of applications and access to information and experiences. More precisely, virtual reality can be explained and defined in the following definitions:

Virtual reality is a process that enables users to become participants in abstract spaces where the physical machine and physical viewer do not exist.

From a technological standpoint, virtual realities may be seen as a form of human-computer interface characterized by an environmental simulation controlled only in part by the user.

Virtual reality requires hardware and software that furnish a sense of: (1)inclusion (immersion), (2) navigation, and (3) manipulation.

Given these descriptions of virtual reality, what is virtual reality curriculum? It simply applies VR technology to the teaching and educating of people in an organized format in school settings.

Exactly how this new type of VR curriculum is to be administered is still open for discussion. The promises for this type of curriculum may involve "educators to act as gods—creating new realities and magical worlds with educational Utopias."

For Helsel, humans have, throughout history, sought "virtual realities." Examples such as "The Wizard of Oz" or "Alice in Wonderland" are provided to aid the viewer or reader to be captivated in "another world."

Unlike these forms of imagination pokers, virtual reality allows the user to be in control of the events and outcomes of the world to which they are involved. They become the main character of that story or event.

This is accomplished by multiple hardware devices. A headmounted LCD display tracks and displays a 3D image which the user controls by moving the body with attached sensors to computers. A dataglove correspondingly retrieves movements from sensors and incorporates them to the image on the LCD.

Along with VR, other technologies such as artificial reality, cyberspace, and multimedia can combine to create a "world" in which the user wishes to be involved. This is similar to the Holodeck found in the popular television sci-fi series, "Star Trek."

What are the implications for educating the young? No longer are students reading "about" planes, they are actually flying one—in VR. No longer are they trapped in a four walled room for eight to nine hours a day. Instead they are exploring rain forests in the Amazon, climbing the ruins of Egypt, or sitting in the presidential debate of 1973. 1973? They can create one in VR. It’s up to them.

Helsel explains that VR technology can not only allow the user to manipulate events, but also in the future, "it will be possible for that user to mentally become another person." All of this of course is for the future, but a future to which we may undoubtedly be more near than we think.

Virtual reality will bring about at least two major changes in the educative process. Learning via printed symbols in textbooks will shift to learning via simulations.

Secondly, curriculum materials will no longer be predominantly textbased, but will be imagery and symbol-based.

By being symbol-based, the human mind can comprehend and take in more information than from text. According to Larry Smarr, director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois:

The eye-brain system is incredibly advanced. Looking at the world, we absorb the equivalent of a billion bits of information per second, as much as the text in 1,000 copies of a magazine. But our mental ‘text computer’ is limited by the fact that we can read only about 100 bites—or characters—per second.

Whether VR is beneficial in the classroom setting will be a strong debate between futurists and traditionalists. But to say that we are going to put a doorstop under the weight of advancing technology is almost certainly futile. It will be up to the individual to decide for themselves what is best.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. What does this article assume about VR curriculum? What is the author’s position on VR in education?
2. Do you feel that young people may be particularly interested in VR curriculum? Why?
3. How would you feel as an educator to be in a position to use VR for your youth group?
4. If you were a parent, how would you respond to your school’s intent to use VR curriculum in the sciences, literature, and history? What about sex education?

IMPLICATIONS

• Today’s technology offers our young people with higher levels of understanding. Young people are in the immediate gratification era. Educating them has become more of a challenge than before. VR does not make this any easier unless we begin to understand what types of technologies influence young people.
• We should be cautious in our approach to any new technological breakthrough.
• Technology often fails to study the sociological effects on the youth. What may seem beneficial because it costs less or is more efficient is not always the best choice when deciding curriculum for the young.

Joshua Y. Cho cCYS