Using VR in Science Subjects: Popularity and Public Attitudes on Twitter

Following their surge in popularity during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, e-learning and virtual education remain a noteworthy and rapidly developing part of the educational landscape. Still relatively immature in its development, virtual reality in particular promises extraordinary potential for positive educational outcomes. Given this potential, it is essential to deepen our understanding of the needs and attitudes of the public regarding its use. Based on Twitter data, our research focuses on the use of virtual reality in biology, chemistry and physics education, providing an analysis of popularity and other trends, along with public attitudes. Major results of our study include the finding that the application of virtual reality in chemistry was the most discussed among these three subjects between July 2016 and July 2022, and the discovery of a strong positive correlation between the frequency of tweets and the launch of hardware and software products. Our overview of the traffic on these three subjects is likely to be of particular value to software developers and virtual reality content creators. © 2022 IEEE.

Using VR in Education: The Current Situation in the UK

Covid-19 has triggered a wave of online teaching and learning that will permanently reshape the future of our education system. Among the various technologies being invented and reinvented, virtual reality is of particular interest as it has many features that make it desirable for distance learning such as bringing a simulated environment close to the learners. In the pedagogical literature, virtual reality has proven to be a useful and engaging tool in classrooms. However, on a large scale, it remains unclear what services and resources are available to educators, and what implications it has on the education system. The current paper, using the UK as an example, reveals a snapshot of how VR is being used in the education system, the VR resources available to the educators including services, hardware and contents that can be used for educational purposes. It discusses the implications this has, also highlights a few associated challenges and opportunities.