Education sees the benefits of 4K in Learning

Image envy, we’ve all had it right? You visit a friend’s house and see the amazing images on their new 4K television or at work see the quality of image projection at a meeting in a new conference suite. Well, it seems the Education market is also beginning to realise the potential benefits of the use of 4K image technology in learning.

Clarity alongside colour

As you start to examine 4K more closely, it becomes clear that there are many educational advantages for this change. Firstly, the higher resolution of 4K on projections and displays can help students with their learning in a number of areas. For example, detailed images can help bring to life and view complex science experiments. Greater clarity and detail can aid the understanding of detailed data sets and charts and graphs in classes such as math and economics. This level of detail, when combined with vivid and differentiated colour gamut, is also important when viewing medical images for doctor and nursing students. 

In fact, psychologists tell us that there may also be wider benefits for students in the use of colour in education. It’s long been suggested that colours have an impact upon us in our everyday lives; that we shop longer in stores painted green and that fast food restaurants like to use bright red, orange and yellow colours because they stimulate our appetites. In education, the colour green could benefit students’ efficiency and focus. Dr Kate Lee, a Melbourne scientist, carried out an experiment where she gave 150 students a “boring attention sapping task”. When they took a break half-way through the task, half the students looked out on a green rooftop and the other onto a concrete rooftop.

The results were surprising. After the break, students who glanced at the greener vista made significantly fewer errors and demonstrated superior concentration, compared to those who viewed the concrete roof. The researchers concluded that the green roof provided a restorative experience that boosted those mental resources that control attention. The use of colour in learning and, in particular, in eLearning design is now an important consideration. The ability for 4K technology to show more detailed images, alongside the benefits of enhanced colour gamuts to project these colours more vividly and in greater detail than ever before is a benefit being recognised by educators.

In this environment, students often use their own devices to create and share content and, of course, they are already very used to the visual benefits of 4K on their laptops, tablets and mobile phones. In many ways, this quality of visual technology has become expected by the current generation of students.

Another benefit for the teacher in the use of 4K projectors or displays is the opportunity to share up to 4 different content sources at the same time with students. Course presentations can be organised in such a way that different applications run simultaneously and independently in the four different quadrants of the screen. This level of engagement during classes produces an increase in student understanding, resulting in better learning outcomes.