Virtual Reality in Classics

This post is based on my MTeach dissertation into Virtual Reality in the Classics classroom.

I became interested in Virtual Reality (VR) when Google Expeditions visited school. We used the Google Cardboard/iPhone devices, and I ‘took’ my Year 10 Classical Civilisation class to the Pergamon museum in Berlin, the New Acropolis Museum in Athens and then to the National Anthropological museum in Mexico. It was great for students to be able to see artefacts in their museum contexts and get a much better 3600 view of them compared to the photos in their textbooks.

When our parents’ association invited bids for new resources and technologies, I leapt at the chance to get VR headsets for the school. We went with Avantis and their Class VR headsets. A major advantage of these headsets is that you can upload your own photos taken with a 360o camera. So, when I went to Arles for my summer holiday in 2019, I took the camera and took photos of the Arles amphitheatre, Nimes amphitheatre, Pond du Gard and Orange theatre to create a ‘Roman Provence’ playlist on the headsets.

I’m not going to go into my methodology and the finer details of my research here, but I found that VR headsets have much more to offer than the ‘wow’ factor of initial use (though I admit that it is wonderful seeing students respond to ancient architecture this way!) Students were motivated to explore the different scenes, felt ‘immersed’ and ‘present’ in the scene – that they had really been there – and got a better understanding of the architecture in its context e.g. the Athenian acropolis high above the city of Athens. One of my students said, ‘I think you can remember it more – when you’ve been there, it really sticks in your brain, and you can also explore it yourself’.

My study looked at using VR in two different modes of teaching and learning: direct instruction in which the teacher, as the expert, pre-teaches or ‘transmits’ the material as well as guiding students around the sites, and constructivism, where students construct meaning for themselves in collaboration with others and where the teacher aims to ‘create spaces for students verbally to elaborate developing concepts’ (Vyogsky in Moore, 2000:16). There were two separate lessons: one on ancient architecture in Rome, where I was the tour guide, and one on Roman Provence where students explored the material in pairs without me guiding. My study found that students needed aspects of both direct instruction and constructivism: pre-teaching involving direct instruction to explain ahead of the VR concepts such as Romanisation and the ways in which the amphitheatres, theatres and aqueducts were used, as well as student paired exploration of the sites and their own construction of schemata about the visible impact of Romanisation in ancient France.

Student response reflected this: one student said ‘I learnt more from the Roman France (constructivist activity) because obviously we were more involved’ while another said ‘I preferred it when you were the tour guide (Rome direct instruction lesson) and, in some ways, I learnt more like that because you were explaining it in more detail than I would have done in the pairs’. The students were keen to create their own material using the 360 o camera and guide students around places they had been to. What my study also showed me is that the role of VR in the classroom has to be considered carefully, thinking through what the students can do by themselves, and what the role of the teacher should be.

There were a few students who expressed reservations with the VR. It is important not to stay in the scenes for too long – VR-induced symptoms and effects (VRSIE) can happen if students use the VR for too long. I used it for 10-15 minutes before giving students a break. There were also some technical issues with headsets not working – Avantis have been helpful in reflashing our headsets this summer, but it is quite common for at least 5-6 sets not to work in a lesson which is a source of great frustration for students and the teacher.

Students wanted to use VR in other subjects: one student wanted to see the Berlin Wall in its city context in History, while another thought using it to be in a French café would give further authenticity to an oral activity. Dalgano and Lee note that VR can ‘facilitate experiential learning tasks that would be impractical or impossible to undertake in the real world’. I can’t take multiple foreign trips in an academic year so being able to ‘take’ my Year 10s to Roman France, Italy and Greece within the course of a lesson is wonderful.

If you’d like to read more about VR, I’d suggest the following:

Avantis Systems Ltd (2019) White Paper: ClassVR – A Guide to VR and AR in Education. Online. Available at: https://www.classvr.com/download/whitepaper-a-guide-to-ar-vr-in-education/

Dalgarno, B. and Lee, M.J.W. (2010) What are the learning affordances of 3D virtual
environments? British Journal Educational Technology Vol 41 No 1 pp.10-32

Mannion, J. (2019) ‘Growth Headset? Exploring the use of virtual reality and augmented reality in schools’ Impact (January) pp.70-73

Parmaxi, A., Stylianou, K. and Zaphiris, P., (2017). Leveraging Virtual Trips in Google
Expeditions to Elevate Students’ Social Exploration. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 10516 (Part IV), pp.368–371.

Watson, D (2019). Virtual Reality in schools: beyond the googles. TES 7 June 2019. Online. Available at https://www.tes.com/magazine/article/virtual-reality-schools-beyond-goggles