Enhancing the online education experience using virtual reality

The strategic use of immersive interactive learning technology as a teaching, learning and assessment method is rapidly expanding across a wide range of industries (Shepherd in A Conceptual Framework for Simulation in Healthcare Education, 2017). From a healthcare education perspective, simulation, with its wide range of applications, including Virtual Reality (VR) is increasingly penetrating and influencing the preparation, professional development and continuing education requirements of most disciplines of the healthcare workforce (Blum et al. in Int J Nursing Edu Scholarship 7(1), 2010; Bogossian et al. in Nurse Edu Today 34:691–696, 2014). Indeed with Psychological Sciences, the use of VR as a simulation-based activity is beginning to gain traction as a platform for the experiential learning about and addressing issues that challenge existing learning strategies and processes (Adery et al.in Psychiatry Res, 2018; Valmaggia in The use of virtual reality in psychosis research and treatment, 2017). As more and more units of study are being delivered through a digital (online) learning platform the need to ensure that evidence-based, pedagogically driven levels of authentic learning are being delivered becomes an important consideration. This includes the potential of VR to augment the online course content using computer-generated simulations of realistic immersive, interactive three-dimensional (3D) images, ideas or environments, using specific electronic equipment. By developing pivotal, strategic VR-based learning activities, difficult theoretical concepts or uncommon learning interactions can be addressed using auditory, visual and even tactile sensory feedback.