The challenge
The trench environment offers plenty of triggers for advanced conversations on conditions, technology, strategy and even literature during this period.
In terms of helping the next generation understand the desperate consequences of countries going to war, I have never seen anything quite like this. We have certainly been teaching with more impact since we started using VR in our lessons.
Students simply do not forget visiting the trench’s whilst still remaining in their classroom I would thoroughly recommend all history departments teaching this topic to make this resources an integral part of studying this awful part of European history.
Quote from Paul Grange
'Teaching the First World War is deceptively complicated. It’s not just about unfortunate soldiers stuck in muddy ditches for four years. However, there is a danger that so much time is spent teaching the fundamentals that there is little time for pupils to appreciate the wider implications fortechnology, society and international relations. By using VR technology you accelerate their understanding of the topic several times over, allowing teachers to get pupils discussing these higher level issues more quickly – with a corresponding positive impact on their exam answers.'
What did you do?
Our annual battlefield visits to Belgium offer an important and highly emotional experience for students.
There is no substitute for visiting the trenches in person but not all students can take part. Even when there, it is difficult to bring them fully back to life for the students in the way they would have been at the time.
Virtual Reality offers the opportunity to transport the students back in time. Having their audio and visual senses immersed as they explore these trenches is a unique experience for them.
Watching how the students react when viewing the material shows how hard hitting the resource is and this becomes especially clear when the students emerge back into the classroom environment.
Why did you do it?
Our annual battlefield visits to Belgium offer an important and highly emotional experience for students.
There is no substitute for visiting the trenches in person but not all students can take part. Even when there, it is difficult to bring them fully back to life for the students in the way they would have been at the time.
Virtual Reality offers the opportunity to transport the students back in time. Having their audio and visual senses immersed as they explore these trenches is a unique experience for them.
Watching how the students react when viewing the material shows how hard hitting the resource is and this becomes especially clear when the students emerge back into the classroom environment.
What was the impact on learning?
The average increase was 11 marks for pupils that sat both papers. This is significant as the two assessments were out of 64 marks and the improvements made by pupils were not exclusively in the areas/topics we had covered during boot camp. This represented an average 17% increase over the 2 papers. This would equate to a full 1-grade increase based on recent grade boundaries, although this does depend on which tier the pupil has been entered for.
The pupils were also asked some questions to uncover their attitudes towards maths. Enjoyment went up from 3.16 to 4.43 and the data suggests that pupils felt readier for their GCSE exam as this saw a jump from 2.42 to 4.04. The data also reveals that pupils thought that maths was more relevant to their lives with a 0.7 increase between the start and finish of Bootcamp.
Quote from Year 10 Student
"I really felt the emotions of those soldiers trapped in the trench. I would have never felt such emotion from a text book description. I felt great sympathy of the soldiers as the conditions they were in were horrifying." pupil, The Gilberd School
How did you do it?
We have found that spending more than 30 seconds in the virtual reality environment really does take the viewer out of their immediate classroom context and they genuinely start to forget their real world surroundings and quickly begin to explore what the trench really was like for soldiers at the time of the WW1.
The sound of the unwell soldier nearby is remarkably effective and re enforces the idea that soldiers were unable to choose their destiny and leave the front line due to reasons of ill health to look after themselves.
The periscope feature accurately conveys the limited technology available for the solders to assess their enemy and the persistent rain offers a miserable reminder of the awful conditions that solders had to endure.
Even though we have limited resources to use in lesson time, with careful management of the class activities – we found that students could get their turn to experience the VR resource, although we had to keep ensuring that the battery was able to keep pace with the demands from the students.
What was the impact on learning?
The achievement of the students has been significantly boosted as result of using this resource. Their engagement levels were remarkable. Many of them were familiar with VR technology, but in a leisure context.
To bring the technology into their school based learning has added an extra dimension for many and for some students it has drawn them into the subject in a serious way for the first time.
The strong visual and immersive experience particularly helps students who were previously struggling to grasp how bad the conditions really were and who had not visited the actual battlefield sites.
For the higher level students, they were challenged to place the different elements found in the VR scene within the broader context of life on the front line.
Examples of achievement
Personally I have found there to be two great benefits to using this VR technology. Firstly is the sheet buzz and excitement that it generates within the school, I have pupils from other classes stopping me in the corridor and asking me when they’ll get a chance to use it.
This has created a knock on effect in the effort levels of many pupils, who are inspired by their VR experiences to produce higher quality work on the topic. Secondly it makes it much simpler to ensure no one is left behind in their understanding of basic concepts.
The immersive nature makes it almost impossible to encounter that one pupil who, after studying the topic for weeks, writes something that betrays a complete lack of understanding of the basic mechanics of trench life and warfare.
These pupils have been there, seen it with their eyes, and so makes their understanding far more comprehensive than any other technique I’ve ever seen. It isn’t a gimmick. It is transformational in the classroom.
I would encourage other history teachers to consider using this resource because of the sheer unforgettable uniqueness of the experience and the corresponding excitement this generates within the class for the topic as a whole.
Quote from Year 10 Pupil
"It allowed me to explore the scene in 3D, something I would never have been able to do through a textbook"
