Areas of Education

Education

- Empathy
- Teen Smoking Prevention

Virtual reality (VR) is not just for entertainment or technical simulation anymore. Like the less advanced technologies of board games and music, VR, video games and computer programs are now being used to teach people of all ages both content and skills. The immersive and sometimes collaborative nature of VR allows for students to “learn by doing” through hands-on activity. The number and quality of repetitions they can perform defray the cost of these systems. Science experiments can be replicated over and over, without ever having to replenish expensive or dangerous chemicals. Curriculum can be taught without the cost of printing books. And all of this can be done in a way that is more engaging and exciting for the users, facilitating permanent knowledge acquisition.

• Empathy

  Virtual reality technologies are increasingly being used to create empathy between people. Some programs deal with increasing cooperation between two users trying to complete a task within the same environment. However, increasingly, virtual environments are being created to allow family, friends, and caregivers of those suffering from a disease to experience the struggles that the patient faces, in turn sensitizing them to the complications of specific disorders.
  
  One example of this is a program created to allow people to experience the fatigue and frustration that come from the anemia associated with chemotherapy. Participants experience the environment from a first person point of view, struggling to move through the environment by pushing on resistant pedals and hearing the heartbeat grow faster and louder as the virtual patient tires. Other environments allow caretakers and family members of those with schizophrenia to experience the hallucinations that accompany the disease. Yet another program allows students to navigate an environment as if in a wheelchair, familiarizing them with the difficulties that their disabled classmates face.
  
  All of these environments increase the understanding between individuals and help erase the stigma associated with mental and physical disorders. IMI-E works to bring together researchers, clinicians, and patients to make these types of programs more readily available to the European population.

• Teen Smoking Prevention

  IMI-E is seeking a grant to develop a virtual world that will work to prevent teen smoking. The world will allow the user to enter a human body, observing internal organs and bodily functions. By creating two versions of the environment, users will be exposed to the inside of both a healthy body and a smoker's body. Combined with education, teens entering this environment will witness the damage that cigarettes inflict upon internal organs. In experiencing this immersive environment, it is hoped that teens will be able to internalize the dangers of smoking.