The power of virtual reality performance experiences for education

This article looks at how empathy and experience, existing within the virtual reality (VR) performance medium, facilitate learning. The article focuses on the importance of soft skills in education and highlights empathy and experience as important contributors to developing skills in understanding and communicating with others. It acknowledges that the development of skills and attributes that benefit education and employment also benefit life satisfaction and well-being. The article contemplates VR as an ‘empathy machine’ and explores how VR performances offer immersive and interactive storytelling experiences. It argues that VR could promote empathy by broadening perspectives through exposure to immersive storytelling, in addition to real-world interactions, helping to advance beneficial soft skills development. If VR could be an effective ‘empathy machine’, then VR performances could offer an even more powerful medium to develop soft skills and empathy. The article draws on three different examples of VR performances to illustrate their education potency and concludes that, with further research, VR performances could be influential tools in education for soft skill development.