In the second episode of a three-part series on innovation at Cned, Julien Cardon, Innovation Project Manager, explains how Cned is working on integrating virtual reality to provide this tool to students and improve their learning experiences.
At Cned’s Research & Development department, we focus on anticipating emerging technologies, including virtual reality.
Currently, virtual reality is not yet widely democratized, but it is expected to become so quickly. “When that day comes, Cned must be ready to offer effective pedagogical models for learning,” he emphasizes.
Much has already been achieved in virtual reality, particularly in applications within industries and the healthcare sector, “focused on procedural approaches to adopt safe practices, and so on.”
“In education today, virtual reality is mostly used for exploration or discovery.”
He provides examples such as virtual museum tours, visits to archaeological sites, or exploring cities.
At Cned, our aim is to harness virtual reality to bring genuine learning progress to students.
Benefits of Virtual Reality for Learning
“We have assessed the benefits that virtual reality can bring to learning through scenarios we’ve developed in VR,” explains Julien Cardon.
Several hypotheses were tested: sensory immersion enhances memory retention; experiential learning through problem-solving can facilitate learning; high learner engagement, where students must make decisions to progress in the scenario and achieve concrete objectives, supports active learning, and so on.
“This is our approach at the Innovation Lab: we don’t necessarily have all the answers to our questions, so we seek them from users—in this case, the students,” he adds.
He also shares an example of their first scenario, which focuses on geometry: calculating volumes and building structures with various geometric shapes. Images from this scenario can be found in the video above.
For instance, this scenario was tested with middle school students “to gather their feedback and improve it accordingly,” he concludes.
