The VR4Empathy project brings together partners from Portugal, Slovenia, Greece, and Denmark to design, test and validate an innovative approach that uses Virtual Reality to promote cognitive empathy in students.

The project falls under the action “Partnerships for Innovation – Forward-Looking Projects”, of the Erasmus+ Programme, in the Lot of Digital Education. It has the participation of the Ministries of Education of Portugal and Slovenia and the Institute of Education Policies of Greece. Based on the relationship between Virtual Reality, Psychology and Education, the main objective is to provide teachers with the necessary skills and tools to use Virtual Reality-based resources (complemented with other teaching materials) in their classes, promoting students’ cognitive empathy and improving the students’ learning experience.

To this end, a quality referential for the development and use of Virtual Reality in formal education will be created, tested, and validated, which will serve as a basis for designing educational resources. A teachers continuous education training programme on the development and use of this approach and resources will also be designed and implemented. The results of the project will be tested in secondary schools in Portugal, Slovenia, and Greece.

To promote and accompany this initiative, the consortium intends to create an “EdTech” network, made up of schools, IT/EdTech companies, public authorities, and associations (business, IT clusters, teachers’ associations, etc.), but also teachers, school headmasters, parents, and researchers in education and digital education.

Based on the results of the project’s implementation in the school context, policy recommendations will be drawn up to support the adoption of the quality referential in a structured and generalised way, not only in the countries involved, but throughout Europe.

The VR4Empathy project consortium includes seven partners from Portugal, Slovenia, Greece and Denmark, including, in addition to INOVA+, three public authorities (the Portuguese Ministry of Education – DGE, the Slovenian Ministry of Education and the Institute for Education Policy from Greece), two universities (the University of Ljubljana and the University of Peloponnese), and a company specialized in the development of digital educational resources based on Virtual Reality (Khora, Denmark).

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