Virtual Reality Applied to School Education

VIRION (Virtual Reality Applied to School Education) was an action-research project co-funded by the Erasmus+ Program of the European Union. It was carried out by an international consortium of five entities from four European countries.

The project aimed to enhance the acquisition of skills in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). To accomplish this goal, VIRION has developed immersive virtual reality environments tailored to these disciplines, allowing students to interact and take an active role in their learning. In this project, virtual reality provides an interactive platform for understanding complex concepts, developing practical skills, and fostering critical and creative thinking.

Effective use of virtual reality is known to facilitate knowledge acquisition and boost student motivation, especially when designed as gamified environments that offer engaging and playful learning experiences.

The virtual reality tools created by VIRION enable students to interact with educational content designed with these principles in mind, based on pedagogical needs identified through surveys and interviews with European teachers.

Within the project, the DCS chair was involved in an extensive mapping of VR solutions, by coordinating interviews with experts and literature reviews from all four participating countries.

The results of the project are made available on the web portal developed by the DCS chair, where a chatbot is also available for accessing the project content. The completion of the project was preceded by an extensive and successful test of the VR content developed in the project for the school subjects of mathematics/geometry, physics, chemistry and biology, which the HCU carried out at and in cooperation with secondary schools in Hamburg, Flensburg and Detmold. Eight other schools were involved across Europe.