Exploitation of virtual reality in education

Abstract

Virtual reality technology has seen rapid development and decrease in cost in recent years. Use of virtual reality in educational contexts has seen substantial interest from academics, and thus studies about the effectiveness of virtual reality as a learning environment have emerged. This literature review aims to identify general trends found in studies using virtual reality in educational environments, more precisely using head-mounted displays to immerse learners into a virtual world, and what gaps in research need to be filled in future studies about incorporating virtual reality into education. Studies from the last ten years were search and selected from three different scientific databases. It was found that research about the topic mostly consisted of exploratory work, with issues such as lack of implementation of learning theories into the designs of the learning environments, and emphasis on determining the usability of the technology. Critical components of learning using virtual reality, such as presence, the sense of belonging to a virtual world as if it were reality, are still poorly understood. Distinct differences between head-mounted displays’ exist, possibly contributing to the difficulty of accurately determining general guidelines for creating efficacious virtual reality learning environments.