Transfr was very excited to host four learning experts, seasoned PhDs with decades in the field of education and learning science, for an in-depth discussion on VR training and the future of learning. The first session of the Transfr Film Festival webinar series — “Can VR Advance Learning?” — was a compelling, interactive panel discussion among Drs. Yun Jin Rho (VP of Learning Intelligence, Transfr), Keith Lyle (Director of Learning Sciences, Transfr), Pooja Agarwal (cognitive scientist, Berklee School of Music Professor, and author), and OP McCubbins (associate professor of Agricultural Education at Mississippi State University).
After screening a short film that the Transfr Video Team had compiled from an on-site visit to our Louisville, KY — featuring Drs. Rho and Lyle, as well as research assistant Alicia Pennywell and several study participants — the panel dove into some key findings from the video, discussed the unique ways that VR can help people learn, and shared their thoughts on how VR can help prepare, the current generation of students and job seekers for the careers of the future.
Key video takeaways: VR is highly effective and engaging
While training with Transfr sims takes place in the virtual world, measuring the effectiveness of those simulations takes place in the real world. The Learning Intelligence Team conducts field research and surveys in various locations and operates a research lab in Louisville, KY. Our Video Team went on-site to capture video with actual test participants (Drs. Rho and Lyle) for a compelling video about this industry-leading research.
Conversations with participants surfaced their genuine thoughts about learning via VR—interviews with Drs. Rho and Lyle (as well as Research Assistant Alicia Pennywell) revealed their findings, including a documented increase in “A” grades when VR was integrated into college automotive classes. Learners who used Transfr’s Virtual Health Clinic simulations to learn vital healthcare tasks showed significant learning gains, regardless of demographic background.
“We found that learning from VR simulations had more positive outcomes than the traditional learning methods,” Dr. Rho explains. “These learning gains didn’t just apply to one group of students or a certain group of students, but to all different types of novice learners.”
Experts sound off on the value of VR practice
While a host of factors potentially contribute to VR’s effectiveness (immersion, lack of distractions, similarity with real-world scenarios), one aspect of VR learning that the panel spent considerable time discussing was active learning and repeated practice. In a VR learning simulation, users begin familiarizing themselves with the tools and processes immediately and can make mistakes in a safe, consequence-free environment.
“I think [the findings from the Learning Intelligence Team] tell us that immersive learning works,” said Dr. McCubbins. “Hands-on learning experiences work; it doesn’t have to be a real-world experience. It can be a simulated experience. I think that there’s lots of benefits to being able to offer some of those simulated experiences.”
Dr. McCubbins asserts that even simulated experiences can have value when helping people acquire new skills, and the ability for learners to get plentiful practice repetitions in a safe, consequence-free environment may contribute to VR’s effectiveness. Dr. Agarwal, author of Powerful Teaching, had this to add about the importance of “retrieval practice” in developing new skills:
“Retrieval practice is simply practicing what we know…” Dr. Agarwal explains. “When we practice an instrument, we learn it better. When we practice a language, we learn it better. And so something neat about VR, especially now, is the element of practice built in. That is what VR serves the purpose for, is retrieval practice. I’ve looked at several EdTech tools. We’ve all seen many of them come and go over the years and the decades. And VR seems like a fantastic opportunity to encourage more of that practice in real-time.”
VR offers exciting new horizons for learning
Since the dawn of the species, humans have gathered — and, more importantly, shared — knowledge. Technological advances like writing, digital storage, and the internet represent developments and variations in how we preserve, collect, and disseminate that knowledge. VR training is another link in this chain of learning techniques with unique possible benefits. VR can help increase access to learning opportunities for students and job seekers in various settings.
“One thing that we’ve also talked about is learning to generalize what you learn in the headset to various settings,” Dr. Lyle explains. “This is an age-old problem in learning and education… often educators only have the opportunity to teach in one particular setting, even though they know that learners will need to be able to fix a variety of different cars, not just one. VR has the potential for us to vary the parameters much more readily than can often be varied in current educational situations.”
Dr. Agarwal left us with her take on the broad applicability of VR learning and its potential to change the way we learn:
“What excites me about VR learning research is its generalizability… from automotive learning to recipe learning, to health sciences… I haven’t seen previous [learning] tools that have this element of improving learning in a lot of different domains… I’m excited about what long-term learning in VR might look like.”
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