Oculus Rift – The Future of Learning Web Summit 2015

Described last year as “bigger than almost anything we’ve seen or maybe anything we’ve seen in the past” Oculus VR were back again this year. Palmer Luckey co-founder and chief technology officer gave us his insight into how he sees oculus and virtual reality shaping the future of learning:

“the best way to learn is not necessarily to read things in a book, it’s to do things in real life but obviously it’s not feasible for every person to do everything that’s available in real life. Virtual reality could potentially make those experiences from the real world available to everyone… I’m really excited about using virtual reality for education.”

From deep mines to aircraft training, virtual reality can literally create a controlled environment where people from all over the world can train and be educated in almost any field imaginable. “Anything that you can do in the real world can be done a lot more safely and cost effectively in virtual reality,” Luckey explains. Some of the most expensive training is in the aerospace industry with the cost of flight simulators for pilot training often in the millions. The use of immersive virtual reality technology can potentially cut this cost by up to and over 80 percent. These kinds of reductions can change an entire industry.

Luckey was quick to dismiss traditional classroom training too, “classrooms are broken,” he claims. It may sound harsh but statistics show that people learn in different ways and attention spans are dwindling. A study conducted this year by Microsoft found that our attention spans have dropped as low as 8 seconds, lower than that of a goldfish.  This being the case, more and more people are opting for practical or visual learning over traditional classroom based or text heavy methods.  With retention rates being recorded at an average rate of 75 percent for practical or video based learning we’re with Luckey on this one “there is clearly value in real world experience.”

Check out the short interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyoASgFUhLY