Mobile Virtual Reality: A Promising Technology to Change the Way We Learn and Teach

Abstract

Even when Virtual Reality (VR) is included in the new technologies set, we have to be conscious about how old is the idea of representing reality in an artificial way. Since centuries ago, human beings have tried to take advantage of synthetic realities in order to make out of them learning tools, because of their capabilities to arise emotions, intrinsic motivation and to make users immersed in what they are trying to learn. Technological evolution and new pedagogical strategies, represented by affordable, high-quality head-mounted displays (HMDs), and neuroeducation, have set a new environment for using mobile VR (mVR) in educational contexts. This renaissance of virtual reality as a disrupting tool for training and education has to be supported by pedagogical innovations with the objective of being global, massive, and effective. The aim of this chapter is to discover how the relationship between VR and education has evolved and its effectiveness along diverse educational stages/topics, since its early approaches to present didactic strategies. In addition, we want to go deeper in how schools could use VR in their pedagogical practice, setting the focus in the manner neuroeducational theories inform VR instructional design. Lastly, we are going to establish a realistic multidimensional baseline (based on hardware and software capabilities, software, economic, and sociocultural conditions and teachers' skills and motivation) that could effectively promote mVR massive adoption in education.