Since 2018, Richard Carter-White and I have examined the claim that virtual reality (VR) holds significant potential for pedagogical applications in geography. Interested to read what we found? The first results of our study have been published in Geographical Research open access today! It has been an absolute delight to work together with Richard, thinking through and challenging commonly held assumptions about VR and its application (as a technology) within education. Below are some key takes from the article ⬇️:
➡️ VR technology may work as a (dis)inhibitor and provide users with a sense of social and temporal freedom to explore sites but in combination with a new set of spatial and perceptual constraints.
➡️ VR field trips may generate curiosity about the “details” of a given site, but we argue that learning with and through VR technology only became possible via active bodily adaptations and renewed understandings of bodily capacities and their inequalities.
➡️ VR works most effectively if conceived not as a journey into a self-contained virtual realm but instead as a spatial prompt designed to provoke new questions for students already on the path to developing geographical understandings and imaginations related to specific sites.
Read more about our research in the following link. The article has been made available Open Access: