Edutainment an Innovative application to changing the classroom

Investigations have shown that Virtual Reality (VR) can be a useful tool to enhance the learning process. By sharing a Virtual Environment, students can collectively participate in a shared experience. If tailored with an educational bias this environment can provide an almost boundless educational tool that is only constrained by the limits of the VR hardware. High performance VR systems such as the CAVE provide an ideal platform that can immerse students within the virtual world. Using such a system with educational applications that have been developed to contain an element of fun, would result in a powerful learning tool that students would enjoy using.

Through the interconnection of multiple VR systems the learning environment can be distributed amongst multiple users at different locations. At a basic level, this could allow collaboration as the students share some common task. However, by tuning the applications the students could each be given different roles within these environments. This will further encourage teamwork as the students work together to reach their common goals.

This work builds upon the use of VR as an educational tool and investigates how collaborative interaction between multiple parties can improve learning while also encouraging the formation of working relationships within the Virtual Environment.