ScienceSpace: virtual realities for learning complex and abstract scientific concepts

Exemplary pedagogy in science education should develop learners' abilities to intuitively understand how the natural world functions before inculcating the formal representations and reasoning skills that scientists use. In other words, fostering in students the capability to qualitatively predict the behavior of the objects in the universe is initially more important than teaching them to manipulate quantitative formulas. Through using multisensory immersion in virtual realities customized for education, we believe that complex, abstract material now considered too difficult for many students—and taught even to advanced learners only at the college level—could be mastered by most students in middle school and high school.