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# System prepended metadata

title: 'IMAGINING THE POTENTIAL FOR USING VIRTUAL REALITY TECHNOLOGIES IN LANGUAGE LEARNING - Lloyd, Rogerson and Stead'

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# IMAGINING THE POTENTIAL FOR USING VIRTUAL REALITY TECHNOLOGIES IN LANGUAGE LEARNING - Lloyd, Rogerson and Stead

## Introduction
- Virtual reality (VR) is an immersive, computer-enabled technology that replicates an environment and allows a simulation of the user to be present and interact in that environment.

- Second Life is a 3-D virtual world that made by Linden Lab in 2003 that has 21.3 million registered accounts

- However, Second Life comes with some barriers that may prevent it from being an effective learning and assessment tool. These barriers include usability, safety, technical problems, time, economics, a lack of standards, and persistence

- That future generation of virtual reality is here, and it is based on headmounted displays (HMDs). Education is clearly at the heart of new generation VR... 

## Why Virtual Reality?
- Virtual reality allows educators to bring the outside world into the classroom, allowing students to become immersed in virtual environments. Dalgarno and Lee (2010) describe five affordances of virtual reality in education: 
    - (1) Enhanced spatial knowledge of the explored domain. 
    - (2) Tasks that would not be possible in the real world. 
    - (3) Enhanced motivation and engagement. 
    - (4) Contextualized learning.
    - (5) Effective collaborative learning. 

- These unique affordances of virtual reality have proven benefits in other fields as well, with virtual reality exposure therapy being used to help people suffering from post-traumatic stressdisorder as well as anxiety and phobias.

## Current Technologies
- Virtual (unreal) reality
- Virtual (constructed) reality
- Virtual/Augmented Reality hybrids
- Haptic controls and response systems
- Simulators
- Immersive video
- Telepresence

## Big Technology Challenges
- Latency: the fractional delay in the time between users moving their heads and the VR engine getting that signal and moving the image to match.
- Interactions: Users need new ways to operate in 3-D space (moving around in the world and manipulating objects) as well as being able to interact with virtual 2-D items (menus and text or numerical input) without classic computer peripherals like a keyboard and a mouse.
- Presence and coherence: The virtual world loses its credibility if some objects can be picked up but others cannot, or if different parts of the world lack coherence.

## Perceptions: Students and Teachers
- In summary, both students and educators seem positive about the use of VR in language learning, acknowledging that it has the potential to improve engagement and that it will change the way we teach and learn.

## Conclusions
- In order for educators to be confident in using the technology, there needs to be more targeted research on the effects of VR on the teaching, learning, and assessment of language learning that incorporates current and future technologies. Additionally, educators need to work with technology companies if applications are to be pedagogically sound.