Discover How Virtual Education is Enhanced with Virtual Tours

School teachers and corporate training professionals are flocking to 360 virtual tours as learning environments. This is because content-rich interactive 360 media is more interesting than staring at a flat-screen.

Here we’re showcasing how interactive 360 virtual field trips in education are raging in popularity for a good reason. Who doesn’t want better results?

Virtual Education is a Term That’s Used Very Loosely

At the most basic level a virtual learning Environment (VLE) is an internet platform with courses of study that brings together students and teachers who are separated by distance.

Following a lesson or training on a flat computer monitor is not an engaging virtual education experience.

The human attention span is concise while listening to a sage on a stage presentation. This holds true for both young and older students. It’s a fact of life in a classroom and often worse on a computer screen.

Educators can overcome this challenge by making learning meaningful. The American Psychological Association offers these five points to help you infuse meaning in your lessons plans:

1. Make the content meaningful
2. Adopt a student-centered approach
3. Promote self-knowledge
4. Bring the real world into your classroom
5. Share knowledge and resources

How Do 360 Virtual Education Experiences Enhance Learning?

Virtual reality is used to enhance student learning and engagement through freedom of movement and choice. The goal of all teaching is to find pathways to help students become more motivated within themselves. Intrinsic motivation leads to enjoying the process of learning.

• 2D videos push information which results in a passive viewing and mental drift
• 360 videos and environments allow students to pull data and participate in an experience

Each virtual learning experience is comprised of VR panoramas and/or 360 videos as the foundation. Then add links or what we call hotspot content to enhance and expand on the lesson plan. Contained within these hotpots, any kind of content is fair game: PDF forms, images, animations, videos, links to other content, maps, etc.

360 Virtual Education and E-Learning Enhancements

Our virtual learning environments are limited only to your imagination. Make it more than just looking around a 360 photo or 360 videos.

• Tell a story – the hero’s journey is a proven system
• Gamification – inherent incentive for performance improvement
• Quiz Cards– quiz your virtual tour visitors at any point in the tour
• Scores – measure different capabilities at a time
• LMS Integration – see results and send or download data
• Include Avatars – students and teachers are present in virtual environments

Virtual Education for the Tech Museum and Discovery Education

Explore this virtual education experience we produced for Discovery Education and The Tech Interactive in San Jose, California. Virtual E-learning experiences like this one deliver a lesson plan to download for teachers and interactive virtual field trips for students.

This is a simple and affordable method of using 360 photos and traditional videos that only takes a couple weeks to create from start to finish.

Accessibility should always be a priority too. Virtual education experiences like this are easily viewable on a desktop browser, laptop, tablet, phone, or virtual reality headset like the Oculus Go.

How Virtual Tours Enhance E-Learning Experiences

To help learners of all ages become intrinsically motivated, we have to create an optimal environment that provides compelling, gratifying, personally meaningful learning experiences. When students feel a sense of purpose in their work, they are more likely to investigate and expand into new areas of learning and to persevere when faced with challenges.

Get in touch to work through your ideas or chat about challenges you are having with online learning.

See more samples of training and education with 360 VR here.