VR is set to have its breakout year in 2016 with Oculus, PlayStation VR and HTC's Vive headsets all due to be released. But what's the bigger picture? Are there uses beyond gaming? And does VR have the change to be more than a vehicle for shoot 'em ups and branding gimmicks? 

Here's what TED's best minds had to say:

Expensive approach: Samsung Gear (900eur)
Try Samsung Gear classes to gain a 100% VR experience (everyone for 5-10min)

Boe, A., & Prasolova-Forland, E. (2015). Teaching and Learning Aquaculture in Virtual Reality with Oculus Rift. In E-Learn: World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education (Vol. 2015, pp. 1426–1435). Retrieved from /p/152183/

Carlsen, L. T. R., & Wehinger, P. R. (2015). Remote Operations of IRB140 with Oculus Rift. NTNU. Retrieved from http://brage.bibsys.no/xmlui/handle/11250/2352482

Creem-Regehr, S. H., Stefanucci, J. K., Thompson, W. B., Nash, N., & McCardell, M. (2015). Egocentric distance perception in the Oculus Rift (DK2). In Proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Applied Perception - SAP ’15 (pp. 47–50). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. doi:10.1145/2804408.2804422

Cummings, J. J., & Bailenson, J. N. (2015). How Immersive Is Enough? A Meta-Analysis of the Effect of Immersive Technology on User Presence. Media Psychology. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15213269.2015.1015740#.VroQsfDX4O8.mendeley

Gallagher, K., Jain, S., & Okhravi, N. (2016, January 22). Making and viewing stereoscopic surgical videos with smartphones and virtual reality headset. Eye. Royal College of Ophthalmologists. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/eye.2015.282

Giard, F., & Guitton, M. J. (2016). Spiritus Ex Machina: Augmented reality, cyberghosts and externalised consciousness. Computers in Human Behavior, 55, 614–615. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.10.024

Huang, H.-M., Liaw, S.-S., & Lai, C.-M. (2016). Exploring learner acceptance of the use of virtual reality in medical education: a case study of desktop and projection-based display systems. Interactive Learning Environments, 24(1), 3–19. doi:10.1080/10494820.2013.817436

Hülsmann, F., Frank, C., Schack, T., Kopp, S., & Botsch, M. (2016). Proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Computer Science in Sports (ISCSS). In P. Chung, A. Soltoggio, W. C. Dawson, Q. Meng, & M. Pain (Eds.), (pp. 211–214). Cham: Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-24560-7_27

Juanes, J. A., Gómez, J. J., Peguero, P. D., Lagándara, J. G., & Ruisoto, P. (2015). Analysis of the oculus rift device as a technological resource in medical training through clinical practice. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality - TEEM ’15 (pp. 19–23). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. Retrieved from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2808580.2808584

Kidd, S. H., & Crompton, H. (2016). Mobile Learning Design: Theories and Application. In D. Churchill, J. Lu, K. F. T. Chiu, & B. Fox (Eds.), (pp. 97–108). Singapore: Springer Singapore. doi:10.1007/978-981-10-0027-0_6

Kockro, R. A., Amaxopoulou, C., Killeen, T., Wagner, W., Reisch, R., Schwandt, E., … Stadie, A. T. (2015). Stereoscopic neuroanatomy lectures using a three-dimensional virtual reality environment. Annals of Anatomy = Anatomischer Anzeiger : Official Organ of the Anatomische Gesellschaft, 201, 91–8. doi:10.1016/j.aanat.2015.05.006

Lau, K. W., & Lee, P. Y. (2015). The use of virtual reality for creating unusual environmental stimulation to motivate students to explore creative ideas. Interactive Learning Environments, 23(1), 3–18. doi:10.1080/10494820.2012.745426

Le, Q. T., Pedro, A., & Park, C. S. (2014). A Social Virtual Reality Based Construction Safety Education System for Experiential Learning. Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems, 79(3), 487–506. doi:10.1007/s10846-014-0112-z

Martinez-Hernandez, U., Boorman, L. W., & Prescott, T. J. (2015). Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems: 4th International Conference, Living Machines 2015, Barcelona, Spain, July 28 - 31, 2015, Proceedings. In P. S. Wilson, F. M. J. P. Verschure, A. Mura, & J. T. Prescott (Eds.), (pp. 461–464). Cham: Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-22979-9_46

Monahan, T., McArdle, G., & Bertolotto, M. (2008). Virtual reality for collaborative e-learning. Computers & Education, 50(4), 1339–1353. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360131506001989

Morina, N., Ijntema, H., Meyerbröker, K., & Emmelkamp, P. M. G. (2015). Can virtual reality exposure therapy gains be generalized to real-life? A meta-analysis of studies applying behavioral assessments. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 74, 18–24. doi:10.1016/j.brat.2015.08.010

Secchi, S., Asdrubali, F., Cellai, G., Nannipieri, E., Rotili, A., & Vannucchi, I. (2016). Experimental and environmental analysis of new sound-absorbing and insulating elements in recycled cardboard. Journal of Building Engineering, 5, 1–12. doi:10.1016/j.jobe.2015.10.005

Sra, M., & Schmandt, C. (2015). MetaSpace. In Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software & Technology - UIST ’15 Adjunct (pp. 47–48). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. Retrieved from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2815585.2817802

Tan, C. T., Leong, T. W., Shen, S., Dubravs, C., & Si, C. (2015). Exploring Gameplay Experiences on the Oculus Rift. In Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play - CHI PLAY ’15 (pp. 253–263). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. Retrieved from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2793107.2793117

Xu, X., Chen, K. B., Lin, J.-H., & Radwin, R. G. (2015). The accuracy of the Oculus Rift virtual reality head-mounted display during cervical spine mobility measurement. Journal of Biomechanics, 48(4), 721–724. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021929015000172

Discuss and think together: what kind of opportunities this could bring to teaching and learning research?
Add notes (just by clicking empty area) for each teaching or research idea what you got during your discussions