Teachers have an important duty of care towards their students. To support this, we developed a script for teachers to use in their classrooms to teach students about staying safe in immersive VR.

The script is part of a suite of health and safety resources we developed as part of the VR School Project. It covers things such using hair nets for hygiene, what students should do if they feel cybersick, not staying in immersive VR for too long, and looking out for each other, particular when using VR in ‘moving around mode’ with the controllers.

The script reinforces and elaborates on the advice given on the ‘Be VR Aware’ classroom posters.  It can be found in Resources.

Erica Southgate, VR Enthusiast and Associate Professor of Education, University of Newcastle, Australia

Have you ever been cybersick? It’s just like being seasick or car sick. It can range from feeling mildly ill to being highly nauseated. Not everyone gets cybersick but many people do and it’s just one aspect of health and safety that needs consideration when using immersive VR in classrooms.

A lot of research is going on to determine who is most susceptible to cybersickness, and under what conditions. Cybersickness can come on even after a very short period of exposure, particularly in highly immersive VR where a person can have intense feelings of ‘being there’ and ‘move’ in the environment through navigation or interaction.

At this stage, not much is known about the health effects of highly immersive VR, especially on children and young people. In light of this, the VR School Research Team are committed to conducting the project with caution and to the highest ethical and safety standards. Before using highly immersive VR, teachers should read the safety and regulatory guidelines provided by manufacturers on their websites. These guidelines recommend minimum age of use requirements and outline potential adverse reactions including, but not limited to, photo sensitivity and a range of physical and psychological impacts. It should also be noted that current commercial head mounted displays (headsets) are not designed for the size of children’s heads in terms of fit and lens distance for correct alignment with the eyes of the user.

To identify potential adverse reactions, we reviewed the scientific literature and the safety and regulatory guidelines produced by manufacturers. From these, the team designed a VR School Health and Safety Survey, that can be found in Resources. We used this to screen for potential adverse reactions and minimise risk of harm to students and disruption to learning. For example, a student with moderate or severe cybersickness would have a recovery time that impacted not only their learning during the VR lesson, but into the school day.

Disruption to learning caused by exposure to VR is simply not acceptable, nor is the potential for more serious health impacts on student health.

The screening survey we developed was sent home to parents and carers with an information sheet on the project so that they could discuss health and safety with their child, and ensure informed consent.

As the field of immersive VR for learning matures, we welcome the open sharing of information from teachers, students and researchers alike on how to screen for and minimise health risks for students. This is an important new area that requires the formalisation of guidelines, the development of practical tools, and the documentation of case studies so that we can all use VR safely in classrooms.

Erica Southgate, VR Enthusiast and Associate Professor of Education, University of Newcastle, Australia

How can the real environment of the classroom interact and intersect with the virtual environment for deep learning and fun?

Virtual reality is becoming ubiquitous and affordable with people asking how it might be used to offer students, of all ages, wondrous learning experiences. When I scroll through my twitter feed, I see all kinds of educational technology (EdTech) articles on virtual and augmented technologies, usually featuring glossy stock photos of children and young people sporting the wide-mouth VR gape, a kind of visual short-hand for just how amazing an immersive VR experience can be. Most of the articles that accompany these images are about how the special affordances of VR (its properties or possibilities for action) can be used for learning – for example, virtual field trips to amazing places on and beyond the planet and the ability to manipulate the scale of virtual objects from the smallest (exploring a single human cell that appears as large as person) to the largest (zooming in and out of archaeological sites from an aerial view to a single in-situ artefact).

While there is imaginative thought in EdTech, evangelist articles, there is also a surprising lack of evidence on what actually happens when immersive technologies are introduced into real live schools.

There is research from the field of computer science and health on lab-based or clinical experimentation using immersive VR with children but this research often has small numbers of participants and can be limited in its implications to everyday ‘natural’ settings. Classrooms are dynamic natural settings where learning, in all its complexity, is influenced by a range of factors from the individual differences of students and their socio-cultural and geographic backgrounds, peer interaction, mandated curriculum and assessment options, and the pedagogy or the instructional choices teachers make every time they plan a lesson or step into a classroom.

So what happens when you provide students and teachers with the opportunity to use  virtual reality for learning?

How can the curriculum be tailored to use immersive virtual reality for deep learning and how can we assess if VR actually enhances learning?

What are the opportunities and challenges of using the latest VR technology in school communities, including equity concerns?

How do students and teachers experience VR in their classrooms?

Importantly, given the developmental stages of learners, how can we use this type of technology safely and ethically in schools?

The purpose of the VR School Study is to create a robust, evidence-informed dialogue on these questions based on the data collected during our collaborative research with teachers in real schools. The project involves openly sharing insights and the resources so that the use of VR in classrooms across subject areas. The focus is on developmentally and pedagogically appropriate and imaginative uses of the technology for deeper learning. We welcome dialogue from students, teachers, policy-makers, researchers and developers on using VR in schools and other educational settings.

This website is regularly updated with new insights and resources so follow it or check back every so often to find out what we are up to.

Erica Southgate (PhD), VR Enthusiast and Associate Professor of Emerging Technologies for Education, University of Newcastle, Australia.