Katie Brown

December 12, 2016

CM/IT 290
Final Paper

VR Storytelling in Education: Leading Us to a Secondary Orality

Rudyard Kipling once said, “If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be

forgotten.” With the introduction of virtual reality (VR), the “if” could soon be taken out of that

statement. Utilizing new technology in education is a current hot topic, and virtual reality is among some

of the debated technologies that could be used to teach. After spending a summer interning with a virtual

reality production company, I became fascinated with how VR, an up-and-coming new medium, will

influence and change our lives. With VR being implementing more and more into education, it no doubt

will change the way we learn and think, especially since it is a considerably different teaching tool than

textbooks or written examinations. ​Through its use of storytelling and gaming, virtual reality in

education has the potential to lead us into a kind of secondary orality eventually.

Virtual reality is just that – a reality created virtually. People are put into 3D virtually created

environments and can interact with virtual people, places, and things. Right now, people most commonly

experience virtual reality through hardware called head mounted displays (HMDs). HMDs are “designed

to encompass your entire normal vision range…and each eye has a different image projected to it,

imitating the way our eyes actually take in information, and allowing for true 3D depth perception” (Nite

3). Essentially, VR is meant to feel like the user is actually present in the virtual environment. HMDs

using tracking technology to move users around in the virtual world as they move their heads, allowing

them to “look around in the virtual world in the same way you would look around in the real world” (Nite

3). Some of the big names for HMDs are the Oculus Rift, HTC’s Vive, and Sony’s Project Morpheus

(Nite 5). The technology is still in its earlier stages, but it is the “fastest growing technology market in the
world” (Nite 1). As it grows and becomes more popular, VR will become more realistic, immersive, and

interactive, potentially creating realities indistinguishable from our own.

This up-and-coming technology might seem like it clashes with ancient idea of oral storytelling,

but ultimately the two might not be so different after all. Oral cultures are those that existed before the

invention of writing. These cultures relied on memory since there was no way for them to write things

down for later, thus they lived in the present, learned through experience, and relied on oral storytelling to

remember their history. Learning and living through experience is concrete, vivid, and analogical, and

results in a whole different kind of thinking than literate cultures. Without writing, everything is spoken,

and speech is ephemeral – temporary – so keeping track of things relied on memory and oral storytelling

(Weimer). Writing is abstract and “destroys memory” because it allows people to forget things and go

back and read them later (Ong 135). Because of the ability to record ideas, write things down, go back

and look at them, compare them to other things, analyze them, and break them down further, “written

words sharpen analysis” (Ong 144). Writing transformed thought (Ong 138). Essentially, the invention of

literacy led to logical reasoning because of our ability to go back to ideas and analyze them and relate

them to others.

Education in oral cultures existed in the form of storytellers recounting old stories of the past, but

education today focuses mainly on, reading, writing, and logical and analytical thinking – the exact things

the invention of writing gave us. While some oral lecture is involved in education, for the most part

students learn through reading about subjects and then apply what they have learned either through

written examinations or papers. Education today heavily focuses on literacy and privileges logical

thinking and reasoning. Our current education system in the U.S. approaches teaching students through

what Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown refer to as a “mechanistic view,” in which “learning is

treated as a series of steps to be mastered, as if students were being taught how to operate a machine”

(Thomas and Brown 35). One of the ways our education system falls short is that it is stuck in an
old-fashioned method of standardization that came out of the Industrial Revolution, a kind of “one size

fits all” method that worked well during the industrial age when the K-12 education was preparing

children for “factory jobs and standard roles in corporations” (Nite 89). Our education system is due for a

change, and “virtual reality is going to usher education into the 21​st​ century, providing a much-needed

shake up of a system that has lagged behind our technological and neurological advancements” (Nite 88).

One thing is certain: VR is a game-changer for education.

In some cases, VR games and simulations are already beginning to worm their way into the

classroom. In a TED talk, Michael Bodekaer discusses the creation of virtual science laboratories and how

this VR could revolutionize the future of science class in school. In a study he refers to conducted by

learning psychologists, there was a 76% increase in learning effectiveness when students were taught

using VR than those who were taught using traditional teaching methods (TED). In addition to these

statistics, an added benefit of using VR in science class is the ability to experiment without fear of hurting

oneself as a student might if they experimented in a real science lab. These VR simulations and games are

some of the most natural ways to teach because they mimic real-life experiences (Gee 42) and allow

students to practice in the VR game before jumping into the “real” world. Sky Nite, author of ​Virtual

Reality Insider​, claims that practice is “necessary for competence and mastery,” (Nite 93), and VR gives

students direct hands-on experiences. The Institute of Play is just one example of a company that values

utilizing games (not necessarily specific to VR) to educate students, because education in the 21​st​ century

is more than just about “acquisition of basic skills and content knowledge”; it should focus on the ability

to think, solve complex problems, and interact critically through language and media, all of which comes

naturally in games (“Why Games and Learning”). In addition, the way many educational VR systems

operate allows for instant feedback for students so they can see right away where they are excelling and

where they are falling behind, as opposed to having to wait days or even weeks to receive feedback from

their instructors on written assignments (Nite 102).

 In addition to gaming and simulation, one of the main ways VR educates is through storytelling.

Whereas now learning mostly takes place through reading ​about​ things in general, education through VR

will focus more on immersing students in a different world and having them learn about that world

through stories and a direct experience. A student today may go to class, open up a textbook, and read

about the history of the American Civil War. A student of the future may simply put on a VR headset and

take a virtual tour of historic Civil War battlefields or even watch re-creations of the battles (Nite 111)

and learn about our nation’s history through stories and direct experience. VR gives us unique digital

storytelling capabilities. Professor Frank van Gils at the University of Twente claims that “storytelling is a

simple but powerful method to explain complex matters,” and humans naturally learn through

storytelling: “this was already clear in 1400s when they used stories to educate children” (van Gils).

Stories ingrain themselves in our minds, so we naturally learn through them just as those in oral cultures

do. VR has the potential to bring back storytelling as the main method of teaching, which could change

the current education system and also how we learn and think.

Utilizing VR in education will completely change the way we educate, and hence how we will

think. In their book, Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown argue that new media of the 21​st​ century

(which includes VR) will bring about what they refer to as a “new culture of learning” because these new

media are going to change the way we learn (Thomas and Brown 17). According to them, this new culture

of learning will incorporate play, imagination, and direct experiences into education (Thomas and

Brown). The key here is the emphasis on experiential learning. Whereas education today puts emphasis

on learning through reading and writing, VR education will focus on learning through experience and

storytelling. Orality by definition is rooted in learning through direct personal experiences and

storytelling. Educating using VR and its emphasis on storytelling and experiential, hands-on learning

could eventually lead us to become a kind of technologically savvy oral culture. While logic and literacy

will probably never truly disappear, using VR storytelling and simulation games as main methods to teach
will profoundly change the way the new culture of learning will think. Maybe it will be harder for them to

connect ideas and cross-reference – all of the things that writing allows us to do. Writing gives us the

ability to think abstractly – about things that were not concretely existent in the world, and out of this

ability came the big ideas of the Enlightenment which helped shape our nation’s ideals (Weimer). What

could become of our values as a culture if VR and new media take us back to an oral tradition where we

think concretely about the world, living in the present and only thinking about the here-and-now?

New digital media has definitely had an effect on how students learn. A professor of Child

Development at Tufts University, Maryanne Wolf, claims that our “technologically rich culture” of today

could lead to the “death” of the “reading brain.” Wolf makes the comparison to Socrates, who long ago

argued against literacy and advocated for an oral culture because he feared writing would destroy human

memory (which it did). Wolf claims that our situation today with incorporating new technology into

education could be seen as a similar problem because it might destroy literacy and our current way of

thinking (Wolf 35). She questions whether the use of new technology (like VR) would cause students to

“fail to probe beyond the information given to the deeper layers of insight, imagination, and knowledge

that have led us to this stage of human thought.” Her solution is that children should “develop an expert

reading brain before they become totally immersed in the digital world” (Wolf 36). Wolf’s analysis of

technology in education reveals some unintended consequences that would surely come about as a result

of incorporating new digital media, especially that as immersive and radically different from books as

virtual reality, into education. Namely, would future generations still be able to read and write? What

would happen to the millions of books that exist in the world today; would some parts of history be

forgotten or transformed, as they were in oral cultures? Will our emphasis on gaming and storytelling in

educational VR limit us as reading and writing never have?

These issues also bring up questions about how education could change as an institution that

affects our daily lives and way of thinking. As stated earlier, our current education system in the U.S.
operates on a standardization method where “one size fits all,” (Nite 89) and most schools have trouble

adjusting the curriculum to fulfill each individual student’s needs (Nite 103). The introduction of VR into

education could completely change this, allowing for a more personalized education. Sky Nite claims that

VR games “allows lessons to be flexible for each student” (Nite 103). An added feature of many VR

gaming platforms for education is that they include evaluation and tracking tools so that educators can

clearly see where students are struggling and excelling in the lesson, and depending on what they deem

appropriate, educators can adjust difficulty levels or add addition activities onto the lesson to ensure

individual student success (Nite 104). These tools also enable students to receive instant feedback on their

work. Today, a student might turn in an assignment, and a few days or weeks later the student will receive

feedback on the assignment, but by that time the assignment is out of the student’s head because it took so

long to receive feedback (Nite 102). VR evaluation tools provide instant feedback and show where the

student needs to improve, so it is fresh in students’ minds and they are more likely to know what they

need to fix or improve upon right away. A personalized education has its benefits in ensuring each student

is successful and not falling behind, but the nature and method of the education itself using VR could still

have its effects on thinking.

The list of unintended consequences as a result of VR in education goes on, resulting in many

unanswerable questions. A particularly important unanswerable question is what would happen to

teachers as a result of the implementation of VR storytelling and gaming into education? In his research

of digital storytelling in education, Frank van Gils reported that not one of the teachers he interviewed

reporting being afraid that they would be replaced by digital systems in the future. They claimed to see

themselves as more “student-advisors” who guide students along on their journey in school rather than as

traditional teachers who stand in front of the class and give students the information and knowledge they

need to know (van Gils). Is this the future of teachers? In oral cultures, storytellers typically told stories to

educate the young, but in the case of VR storytelling, it is unlikely that the teacher would be the one
telling the story with the virtual experience. Will teachers cease to exist? Will we allow technology to

educate us? There could be numerous negative repercussions of allowing children to learn solely through

digital storytelling and not from an actual human teacher – for one, brainwashing and censorship are

major concerns, as Nite points out in his discussion. When creators produce VR content for education,

they may intentionally censor it to protect children, but this “blinds them to the way the world actually

is.” Nite emphasizes that in order to ensure students receive a quality education with VR that does not

brainwash them or lead them to believe something untrue about the world, “VR education needs to

promote active learning and exploration” (Nite 108). This is where teachers’ roles might come in handy.

Teachers may indeed have a permanent role in our world because they could serve as “student-advisors”

who are around to answer questions posed by students after they experience something in VR.

How VR would actually be implemented into schools all over the country is an issue that could

potentially lead to an even bigger gap in learning between socioeconomic classes. Not all schools have the

available funds to provide their students with expensive digital equipment that would allow for VR

storytelling to become the main method of education. Some schools today even have trouble acquiring

textbooks for their students, let alone computers. There is no way to guarantee that ​all ​students would

have access to the “privileged” method of education in this case (VR). While some schools would be

privileging VR storytelling over books and writing, others with less money may have to continue teaching

in the tradition way – through literacy and logical thinking. If student A goes to a school and learns solely

through VR storytelling and gaming and ultimately comes out thinking concretely about the world as one

in an oral tradition might, and student B goes to a poorer school and learns through reading and writing

and is able to comprehend and consider abstract concepts as one in a literate culture does, how would

these two students interact with each other in the world? Would this lead to an even bigger gap between

socioeconomic classes than there is now? These two students would have two very different worldviews.

Their minds work in completely different ways. This could lead to an extreme divide in our culture.
 There is no doubt that VR in education is a huge idea with many unforeseen consequences that

have the potential to change life and thought as the way we know it today. Through its privileged use of

storytelling and gaming, virtual reality in education has the potential to lead us into a kind of secondary

orality. While reading and writing will probably never completely disappear from our culture, privileging

this method of teaching would certainly have its effects on the way we think because of its focus on direct

experience and oral storytelling, as well as the institution of education as a whole. It is vital that we

consider the impact of this new digital media and analyze the way it affects our culture before allowing

ourselves to become hopelessly immersed in an alternate, virtual reality.