What is Futuclass Chemistry VR?
Have you ever wondered what online education can look like? Did you find online education boring or not enjoyable? Do you want a new way to learn? Or do you enjoy when stuff like video game aspects are used to teach you? Well Futuclass is for you. Futuclass Chemistry VR is a VR application that teaches chemistry topics catered towards 7-9th graders that has game like features to ensure people using the application are entertained and focused. You can download this with the link under "Link to download" section.
To use the application, of course a VR headset and controller is required. So now you will be presented with options for lessons that you can purchase. The options that are purchasable are "Reaction Rebalancing", "Escape Room: Oxygen", "Hydrogen & Oxygen", "Salts", "Atom Structure", "Acids, Bases & Salts", "Moles and Molarity 1", "Moles and Molarity 2", and "Chemical Bonds". There are others that are out but are in Estonian and there are more lessons in the future.
A quick run through for each lesson, after watching Youtube and and reading the descriptions.
Reaction Rebalancing: There are 8 levels, all that get harder as you progress. But the user will be able to pick up molecules on the reagent table and the product table that the user can pick up and place in a table in front of them. Then it will output their equation they made and the equation that is right. Similar to test cases and when you get it correct you will see confetti.
Oxygen Escape Room: This lesson is to teach students which substances are required for a reaction to occur based on chemical equations. The student needs to escape a room which adds a lot of suspense. Works similar to Reaction Rebalancing.
As we go further and further, with each lesson, the idea of how to work with the VR application is the same but teaches different lessons of chemistry with the same concepts built from the previous lessons. If you are interested in seeing these you can defeintly look it up on Youtube or buy them.
Sources for "What is Futuclass Chemistry VR":
https://youtu.be/kCHbogKLmgw https://store.steampowered.com/app/1485370/Futuclass_Chemistry_VR/
Why is it good for VR or AR?
Futuclass chemistry is good for VR because it offers a interactive way to learn chemistry. Chemistry is a hard topic visualization and game like actions can help people enjoy the topic more. We are bringing classroom knowledge to a current day technology. This can be the foundations of VR education. We can use this application to branch out VR to other fields of education. As with every application there is room to grow and improve this is just stepping stone of what VR can be especially when children may need another source of material to learn and maybe shifting to a online learning setting. Applying new technology to the world we currently live in just shows how far we are coming and better things to come.
Source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZLzPp2eZy0
Who is the audience?
The target audience for this VR application are people who are 7th-9th grade according to their website, so people who are about to go into chemistry. People who may have to go through online schooling. And finally teachers and they can learn better ways to teach. The audience can be even students as this could be the innovation of next gen education. I really believe this can be applied to almost everyone and even be a nice way to revist the material and further enhance VR applications.
What are the issues(positive and negative) with Futuchemistry?
Lets start off with the good
Visible learning, I know for me any many of my classmates when you see stuff visibly you get a idea of a concept and can construct detailed questions to ask.
Celebrations, sometimes a lot of people are going through hard times or forget to celebrate getting a question right and Futuchemistry rewards people with funny animations or confetti falling down to make sure people know to reward themselves.
Improved test scores, a recent study saw that 68% increase of exam scores in a Estonian grammar school. If this is an effective way of learning exam scores should be higher and using the statistics of previous student who did not have this application vs the students who did, the ones with the application scored better.
Short lessons plans and effective. This can be time saving and efficient considering the high scores that were resulted from the application.
Interactions and using new tech. Using new tech always keeps updated and adaptive of our surroundings.
Cheaper than tuition with great reward. Learning can be done at a cheaper rate.
Now what is bad
Very independent, there is no teacher there to help you. Sometimes we need someone who is good on the topic for a resource
Cost efficient, there are DLC's you need to buy that do not come with the free download of the application that are 10 dollars and the equipment can cost a lot
No updates to published lessons only released for new lessons
Some of the Lessons are in Estonian, if we are able to translate different languages to your language why have these videos not been dubbed in your preferred language.
The length of lesson plans are around 30 minutes, which brings up the point of whether or not this application is effective to say you mastered the material.
How can this be applied to a classroom. It would be cool to see this be applied as a grading mechanism where teachers can grade students on the equations and lessons they complete.
Is this really enough to be called an expert and is our education system losing value. This brings a lot of issues such as schooling being the best option due to prices comparison.
School losing value as stated above school coul dbe losing value which means money can be lost as schools.
Sources for the good and the bad: https://futuclass.com/blog/how-VR-lessons-increased-chemistry-test-scores-by-68-percentage/