Benefits of Virtual Reality in Education 

Every teacher wants their students to feel excited about learning and that’s exactly what virtual reality for education can achieve. Imagine taking pupils on a field trip to ancient ruins, a journey through the solar system or even inside the human body, all without leaving the classroom. 

Recent research shows incredible benefits of virtual reality, including improved focus, increased knowledge retention and greater emotional connections to lessons.  

Millions of students worldwide are experiencing the benefits of virtual reality in education, lets discover what implementing virtual reality in your classroom can do for you with practical resources for teaching to help you make this step in your own classroom. 

What are the benefits of Virtual Reality in Education?

Virtual reality (VR) in education offers a dynamic and immersive learning experience that significantly enhances how students interact with content. By placing learners in realistic (and sometimes surreal), interactive environments, VR makes lessons more engaging and memorable.  

Its key benefits include:  

Enhancing Student Engagement through interactive, immersive experiences 

Boosting Knowledge Retention by enabling experiential learning  

Improving Student Learning Outcomes through personalised and hands-on practice 

Developing Collaboration and Social Skills via shared virtual environments and group tasks. 

Building Empathy and Supportive Learning by allowing students to experience different perspectives and scenarios. 

Lets break these down in more detail:

Enhancing Student Engagement 

Students can experience learning and actively participate in the lesson with virtual reality. By exploring immersive learning environments such as visiting the moon or travelling to far-away lands, teachers can boost classroom excitement and engagement while inspiring students’ imaginations! 

At Nagel Middle School in Cincinnati, virtual reality for education transformed 7^th grade science lessons into an immersive, project-based learning unit. Rather than passively learning about climate change, students used VR to actively design a city to reduce carbon emissions, experimenting with solar panels, wind turbines and other green solutions. This immersive learning experience enhanced student engagement by allowing students to see the immediate results of their design decisions within the VR simulation.  

VR learning experiences provide teachers with valuable resources for teaching complex concepts in a way that engages students and inspires active learning.  

Boosting Knowledge Retention

Virtual reality fully immerses students and completely focuses their senses on the teaching topic. When experiencing topics as if they’re reality, students’ brains create clear, detailed mental maps, helping to improve knowledge retention by up to 75%. 

Building on these benefits of virtual reality for knowledge retention, teachers can help all students engage with abstract topics in a more immersive way. When studying Festivals of Light, teachers at Allfarthing Primary School in Wandsworth used virtual reality for education to introduce the topic in a new and exciting way. ClassVR allows students to explore the world like never before, experiencing festivals of light and other cultural events they might otherwise never encounter. By turning abstract concepts into memorable immersive learning experiences, students develop deeper understanding and improved knowledge retention. 

Improving Student Learning Outcomes 

Student attainment remains a significant challenge within education, with many students finding it difficult to fully engage with lessons or understand complex concepts through traditional teaching methods. The previous benefits of virtual reality show how immersive learning experiences can positively support students. By offering interactive, memorable lessons, virtual reality for education helps learners understand content more deeply and build confidence in applying their knowledge. 

Experiential learning with virtual reality benefits a range of student outcomes. With engaging, individualised experiences like walking with prehistoric dinosaurs or holding a beating human heart, teachers can improve student understanding, attainment and even increase test scores by up to 20%! 

For practical tools and ideas, explore our curated resources for teaching to bring VR experiences into your classroom. 

Developing Collaboration and Social Skills 

Virtual reality improves teamwork and social skills by creating exciting, collaborative learning environments. Students can safely communicate and investigate learning topics virtually in pairs or groups within the educational metaverse – enhancing interaction and collaboration in the classroom. 

ClassVR provides the resources for teaching vocational development with our latest EduverseCTE subscription. Students can step directly into realistic vocational settings to build hands-on skills and gain practical experience to transform career readiness. 

When using the set of eight headsets for group work, teachers can monitor what students are doing in real time, manage behaviour, and ensure activities run smoothly.  The teacher controls complement the collaborative nature of virtual reality for education, keeping students focused and making group learning effective. 

To explore practical applications of ClassVR in fostering collaboration, consider reading our blog on how to use ClassVR in paired work.  

Building Empathy and Support SEND Learning 

Virtual reality can be leveraged to create an inclusive learning environment where all students have the opportunity to fully engage and reach their full potential. ClassVR supports this approach by offering tailored VR content for SEND students, providing research-backed resources developed with expert consultation. Through immersive scenes and guided activities, students can develop focus, practice life skills, and experience social situations in a safe environment. 

Teachers can put their students into other people’s shoes with virtual reality. By helping students to see life from different points of view, such as exploring different cultures or experiencing what life is like for refugees, educators can improve emotional awareness and build empathy. 

Virtual reality benefits special education by creating new opportunities and opening up accessibility. From immersive sensory rooms to life skills scenarios, teachers can craft personalised experiences that fit individual needs and contexts.  

“We hope that giving students the ability to interact with new places and experiences virtually, at their own pace and in the safety of the school grounds, will help them to build their confidence enough to try these things in real life.” Corley Academy, United Kingdom 

Research into the benefits of VR in education

Research from PwC highlights the measurable impact of virtual reality for education on student learning. Students using VR have shown impressive improvements across multiple areas: 

• 4 times more focused during lessons 

• 275% more confident in applying learning 

• 4 times faster knowledge retention compared with traditional methods 

These figures demonstrate the clear benefits of virtual reality in education and provide strong evidence that immersive VR experiences can significantly enhance engagement, comprehension, and retention. 

We have collected a repository of helpful evidence and sources of how virtual reality has the capacity to push boundaries of teaching, and how VR can help students meet learning outcomes. Check out the below paper. 

Benefits of Taking a Virtual Field Trip in Immersive Virtual Reality: Evidence for the Immersion Principle in Multimedia Learning  

“A recent meta-analysis by Wu and colleagues (2020) synthesized the findings from 35 studies comparing immersive VR to less immersive desktop VR and other traditional means of instruction. They found an advantage in favor of more immersive media and suggest that using HMDs can improve knowledge acquisition as well as skill development…”  

Source: Educational Psychology Review  
Date: 22 April 2022  

Learning in virtual reality: Effects on performance, emotion and engagement 

Participants in the VR condition also showed better performance for ‘remembering’ than those in the traditional and the video conditions. Emotion self-ratings before and after the learning phase showed an increase in positive emotions and a decrease in negative emotions for the VR condition…”  

Source: Association for Learning Technology  

Date: 2018  

The Promise of Immersive Learning: Augmented and Virtual Reality’s Potential in Education  

“AR/VR solutions can enhance classroom experiences and expand opportunities at all levels of learning. The federal government should support further innovation by investing in research, skill-building, content development, and equitable adoption of immersive technologies…”  

Source: ITIF: Information Technology & Innovation Foundation  
Date: 30 August 2021  

Virtual Reality and Assistive Technology: Learn about the New New Things

“How will this emerging technology enter the classroom and assistive technology space? In this session, Jaclyn Wickham, founder of AcclimateVR, explored some of the current and future applications for virtual reality (as well as some info on applications of Augmented Reality) to support students with autism and other disabilities…”  

Source: CTS: Center on Technology and Disability  

AR/VR in K–12: Schools Use Immersive Technology for Assistive Learning 

Excerpt: “Technology helps educators give each student the attention he or she needs, through tools such as online learning modules, personal tablets and, now, virtual and augmented reality. Experts have found virtual environments can give students who require extra assistance the opportunities to build the skills they need to be as successful in the classroom as their peers…”

Source: EdTech Magazine  
Date: 22 August 2019  

How Virtual Reality Can Help Students Meet Learning Goals  

Excerpt: “Engagement is one area of learning and instruction where technology alights well with where students are focusing their time and energy. Today’s students are digital natives, after all, so it’s not surprising to find that VR technology offers a means to better immerse students in their learning…”  

Source: EdTech Magazine  
Date: 20 February 2020  

Immersive Virtual Reality Field Trips Facilitate Learning About Climate Change  

Excerpt: “In all of our investigations, after experiencing immersive VR people demonstrated knowledge gains or inquisitiveness about climate science and in some cases, displayed more positive attitudes toward the environment after comparing pre- and post-test assessments…”  

Source: Frontiers in Psychology  
Date: 30 November 2018  

Brain science: Why VR is so effective for learning  

Excerpt: “One University of Maryland study found that median recall accuracy rates with VR headsets hit 90 percent compared to 78 percent for learning with desktop computers. In Beijing, students whose lessons were supplemented with VR averaged scores of 93 on a final exam, a 20 percentage point increase from those who simply utilized traditional classroom learning…”  

Source: Verizon  
Date: 23 July 2019

  

Augmented reality in Education – Cases, places, and potentials  

P: Excerpt: “This paper will review uses of Augmented Reality both in mainstream society and in education, and discuss the pedagogical potentials afforded by the technology. Based on the prevalence of information delivery uses of Augmented Reality in Education, we argue the merit of having students design Augmented Reality experiences in order to develop their…”  

Source: ClassVR – Educational Media International  
Author: Bower M, Howe C, McCredie N, et al.  
Date: 2014  

A Pedagogical View of Using Virtual Reality  

Excerpt: “This document has been written to explore current research into the use of virtual and augmented reality within the sphere of learning. We have collated research from a range of sources, studies and organisations to substantiate how and why virtual reality learning can be used to enhance and improve outcomes for learners in various contexts…”  

Source: ClassVR – Avantis Education