Virtual Reality - an expensive solution to unaddressed underlying problem

I’m skeptical of consultancy reports. Consultancy firms need clients implementing new projects in order to survive. But, reading between the lines can be informative.

For corporate training, PWC examined the difference between classroom, elearning and virtual reality modes.

Today’s learners are often impatient, distracted and overwhelmed. Many learners will not watch a video for its duration, and smartphones are a leading cause of interruption and distraction.

Their research found that virtual reality was better than classroom learning and much better than elearning. But, their primary measures were self-reports of distraction and interviews to “capture the learner experience”. A stronger study would have evaluated how much better course participants were at completing tasks after compared to before their training.

This is another case where I agree with the problem and disagree with the cure, at least as we might think about the implications of this study for undergraduate education.

Dealing with distractions is important. There are two ways to do this:

• make a more immersive experience, or
• help students manage the distractions.

For undergraduates, the latter is more important because it means they can work, during their studies and after, in high distraction environments. Training them to work only when the task is fully immersive diminishes their capacity to engage effectively in the world.

Virtual reality has enormous potential in specialist scenarios. For example, in medical education where cadavers are expensive, in various science and engineering disciplines where getting things wrong can be hugely dangerous to students. But in lots of areas, we risk limiting our students’ imaginations, empathy and visualisation skills if we are always confronting them with hyperreality.

Read more on the PWC website: https://www.pwc.com/us/vlearning