Step out of the classroom and into an ancient world with Virtual Reality

“If you want to learn French, you can go to Paris. But if you want to learn Latin, you cannot visit the ancient world; well, with Virtual Reality, now you can!” muses Antony Makrinos, who is an Associate Professor in Classics at UCL.

Across two workshops held in April 2024 at the Object-Based Learning Lab, Antony showed both educators and students how the classics can be taught in innovative new ways through VR.

From current-day Athens to Ancient Rome

Slipping the VR headset over your head, you jerk slightly as you find yourself floating like a bird over the modern city of Athens. You can see the sunny streets of the storied Greek city run into the distant hills as you turn your head carefully from side to side. The shining white pillars of the Acropolis and the Parthenon immediately catch the eye.

This, as Antony says, is only a small part of what VR can bring to our classrooms.

Antony uses the headsets and software of a VR company called ClassVR to take students not only to modern-day Greece but into the Colosseum in Ancient Rome — where students can duck gladiators lunging at each other in a fury of swords and watch lions lunge at them from behind bars.

Alternatively, if you are more inclined, you can also stand on Mount Olympus, home of the Greek Gods, and watch Pegasus soar through the stars.

The ability to explore these virtual environments — where you can move around and interact with objects while physically staying seated — helps enhance immersion and engagement for students, especially when paired with lessons that contextualise the VR experience.

The cube and the amphora

One can even “handle” objects through VR. Holding and manipulating a rubber cube in your hands, you can turn an amphora — a storage jar used in ancient Greece — around and around in virtual reality, peering carefully at its painted design.

This is a form of mixed reality, where physical and virtual environments are combined.

As Antony puts it: “What you feel in your hands is the cube, but what you see when you wear the VR headsets is the amphora. You are instantly introduced to the delights of virtual Object-Based Learning where one can handle any kind of object virtually.”

Incorporating VR into our learning leads us to ask how we can interact with ancient objects — and even opens up questions about what an object is.

For instance, Antony shows us that one can make a 3D object using a phone camera app and then import it into the VR application. An image of a teacup materialises before your eyes, seemingly teleported from Antony’s breakfast table to the headset. The same applies to any other object one wishes.

Students can create their own VR museums with digitised objects. An example shared by Antony has students working at UCL’s Petrie Museum, where they were able to digitise ancient mummy labels.

Advantages and challenges of teaching and learning with VR

The incorporation of VR into the classroom can make the experience far more immersive and engaging for students. It also allows students to pick up some important and increasingly relevant skills — for example, the application and usage of VR technology and other augmented reality tools in a wide range of contexts.

There are some drawbacks to consider too: VR headsets are still quite expensive, VR cannot replace face-to-face teaching, and some users complain of vertigo and dizziness while using the headsets.

Additionally, there are also limitations to the virtual environments currently generated. For example, Antony has asked whether graffiti in Latin could be added to the walls of the Colosseum so that students can approach this text and practise their language skills, but it turned out that this would make the file “too heavy”.

As VR technology continues to improve, these issues of cost, usability, and accessibility are likely to be diminished.

Overall, it is therefore not so much a question of replacing large amounts of classroom teaching with VR, but considering the pedagogical benefits some engagement with VR will offer.

For more information about Dr. Antony Makrinos’s usage of VR in teaching humanities, please get in touch with him at a.makrinos@ucl.ac.uk. He also holds VR office hours at the Department of Greek and Latin, Gordon House — please email Antony for more info. This blog post was written by Kellynn Wee.