Benefits of Virtual Reality in Education


Millions of students worldwide are experiencing the benefits of virtual reality in education, discover what implementing virtual reality in your classroom can do for you! 


Enhancing Student Engagement

Teacher with students using VR & AR in a classroom.

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!


Boosting Knowledge Retention

Two heads showing how knowledge & retention works using VR.

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%.


Improving Student Learning Outcomes

Data graph showing student learning outcomes with VR.

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%!


Developing Collaboration and Social Skills

Graph showing how student develop collaboration and social skills.

Virtual reality improves teamwork and social skills through creating exciting, collaborative learning environments. Students can safely communicate and investigate learning topics virtually in pairs, groups in the educational metaverse – all of which benefits interaction and collaboration in the classroom!


Building Empathy

Two heads with sunny and rainy icons depicting empathy.

Teachers can genuinely 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.


Supporting SEND Learning

Child Head and jigsaw puzzle depicting Learning & support for SEND students.

Virtual reality benefits special education by creating new opportunities and opening up accessibility. From immersive sensory rooms to important life skills, teachers can create personalised learning environments that align to students’ specific learning contexts and meet their individual needs.


Research into the benefits of VR in education

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

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

Excerpt: “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

Excerpt: “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

Excerpt: 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

An Exploratory Study Examining Science Knowledge Retention When Using AR/VR

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: Mary Ann Liebert Inc.
Date: 19 February 2019

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

Excerpt: “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

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

Immersive Learning for the Future Workforce

Excerpt: “Experiential learning has long been argued as the most effective way to learn, and studies have shown that learning through experience increases learning quality and improves retention by up to 75 percent…”

Source: Accenture
Date: 2018

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

Ready to introduce virtual reality into your school?

Get a ClassVR quote and start experiencing the benefits of virtual reality in education today!

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