Learn Better with VR: Making education scalable.

In Ulrich Boser’s book “Learn Better”, the author explains principles that govern effective learning, so far as modern science can tell. From the power of recollection reinforcing memories, to the need for a person to care about what they’re learning in order to improve.
Self quizing and questioning one’s self are some of the most powerful tools for learning.
I do my best to question my writing in an effort to improve. I ask if my sentence structure makes sense, do the words have a flow that’s easy to read, and is my message clear and well founded? If I am not my first critic than I stand little chance at improving in my skillset.
10,000 hours may be a goal to shoot for, but if those hours aren’t spent deliberately we stand no chance at reaching mastery.
Effective learning tends to be uncomfortable. It is the nature of discomfort to spur learning and growth. Self quizzing and questioning can be very uncomfortable, as it forces you to admit mistakes and shortcomings. It is these shortcomings we use to improve our skills. By questionng ourselves we discover what aspects of our skillsets we need to focus on.
Having a teacher or coach who will objectively question your abilities brings a large advantage to the learning process.
Sometimes we aren’t able to find the right questions to ask ourselves. It takes an outside observer to point out shortcomings in our performance. An off kilter golf swing, an overuse of pronouns, or a slight mispronounciation of a foreign language. A skilled outside observer can aid us in discovering how we might improve by asking us the right questions.
Will future teachers be driven by artificial intelligence? AI can be connected to the internet and provide relavant knowledge to students on an individualized basis.
Having enough human teachers to act as skilled observers can be a challenge in a world with growing population. The Chinese struggle to place enough teachers at the heads of classrooms to teach their youth. As a means to improve the education of their country’s children, China has partnered with a game development company to create VR classrooms.
The observation of others provides yet another tool for learning.
We can use the observation of another’s performance to question our own skillset. How can we use a strategy we see someone else using? How are they doing what they do? Is there a way we can do it too?
Stephen King put it best “As a writer you must do two things above all others, read a lot and write a lot.” By reading the work of others you are feeding your mind examples of writing.
Football players practice by watching films of past plays. While watching the films the coaches are asking the players questions. These questions allow the palyers to seek understanding of how to maneuver on the field like the plays on film, or perhaps better than the players on film.
Humans are adept at learning by example, with access to a teacher.
Learning by example means putting the student in front of a teacher, usually in a physical location. Youtube videos have done wonders in sharing knowledge outside of physical boundaries, but nothing beats the three dimensional world of reality. Our memories are built to work in three dimensions, not two.
Virtual reality allows us to share knowledge in three dimensions.
Teaching a child how to hold a baseball bat, showing a student how to mix chemicals, or training a new employee on how to handle dangerous equipment can all be accomplished inside of virtual reality.
By using virtual reality to educate, teach, and train we can democratize education further than ever before. The digital nature of VR means every educational program can be easily scaled up to reach masses of users.
Couple the fidelity of virtual reality with the ability of machine learning algorithms to prompt timely quizzes to students, and we have a potent mixture for the future of education.
No longer limmited by two dimensional displays or pages of technical jargon, education will have engagement similar to 1 on 1 tutoring in the real world. But unlike 1 on 1 tutoring, virtual reality is scalable.
This is post 40 of my 90 VR experiment. Join me here for a daily dose of virtual reality design, gameplay, speculation, and adventure.

