Educational Technology

Mikropoulos, T. A. & Natsis, A. (2010). Educational virtual environments: a ten-year review of empirical research. Computers & Education, 56, 769–780.

The article establishes a precedent and presents a ten-year critical review of empirical research on the educational applications of Virtual Reality (VR). Results show that although the majority of the 53 reviewed articles refer to science and mathematics, researchers from social sciences also appreciate the educational value of VR and incorporate their learning goals in Educational Virtual Environments (EVEs). Notably, the authors determine that constructivism is the theoretical model on which most EVEs are based. The findings show that collaboration and social negotiation are not only limited to the participants of an EVE but exist between participants and avatars, offering a new dimension to computer-assisted learning.

The article provides the vital dialog of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and how VR evolved to give educators and learners powerful tools to support learning. Additionally, the article identifies unique technological characteristics. It includes the creation of 3D spatial representations (virtual environments [VE]), multisensory channels for user interaction, immersion of the user in the VE, and intuitive interaction through natural manipulations in real time. The studies present real-world, authentic tasks that enable context and content-dependent knowledge construction. They also provide multiple representations of reality by representing the natural complexity of the world.

This article reviews peer-reviewed empirical research studies published as full-length articles written in English in scientific journals, proceedings of international conferences, symposia, and workshops, as well as book chapters during 1999–2009. The authors’ relevant literature was reviewed through a comprehensive search of academic resources, organizations, and publishers within electronic databases (ERIC, JSTOR, PapersFirst, IEEE, WilsonWeb, Elsevier, InformaWorld, Mary Ann Liebert, SpringerLink, Wiley Interscience, and MIT press). Within the first of their search, the researchers used the keywords “educational virtual environment” and “virtual learning environment”; as a second step, they used the keywords “virtual environment” and “virtual reality,” and then they conducted a within results search using the terms “education” and “learning.” Finally, they searched for articles cited in the papers they read.

During the study, the authors apply the seven essential principles that Jonassen (1994) presented in “Thinking technology: toward a constructivist design model.” The article essentially features of VR that contribute to learning, such as first-order experiences, natural semantics, size, transduction, reification, autonomy, and presence, are exploited according to the educational context and content. The authors emphasize that “presence” is vital in learning and needs further intensive studies. At the time, the authors suggest that more needs to be concluded regarding retaining the knowledge acquired in EVEs and emphasize that longitudinal studies are necessary. They believe the primary outcome of their investigation is the catalyst for future research perspectives. Aside from aviation, VR is relatively new in the U.S. Army for most occupations, primarily due to the cost associated with development and acceptance by leaders and other stakeholders that can influence buy-in resulting in a high return on investment (ROI).

However, at The U.S. Army Inspector General School (TIGS), we initially used VR to simulate a whistleblower reprisal scenario which received rave reviews from our students. Nonetheless, this effort came with a million-dollar-plus price tag that prevents current leadership from initiating future near-term projects, which are needed to replace 40-year-old videos we are still using as the primary media to demonstrate soldier and civilian assistance and investigation case studies. The article provides a critical footprint to illustrate the benefits of VR to stakeholders. Today, the U.S. military uses VR for training, planning and simulation, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) treatment, and recruitment.

Kavanagh, S., Luxton-Reilly, A., Wuensche, B., & Plimmer, B. (2017). A systematic review of virtual reality in education. Themes in Science and Technology Education, 10(2), 85–119.

Refreshingly, the authors provide a relevant systemic review of virtual reality (VR) in education and reiterate that widespread adoption by education and vocational institutions is still yet to occur. The authors suggest the reason for the status quo is the result of a myriad of limitations to both the technologies themselves and the costs and logistics required to deploy them. Furthermore, to gain a better understanding of the issues, they conducted two distinct thematic analyses.

The first analysis investigated the applications and reported motivations provided by educators in academic literature for developing VR educational systems, whereas the second investigated the reported problems associated with doing so. Moreover, they introduce and compare many recent VR technologies, discussing their potential to overcome several problems identified in their analyses, including cost, user experience, and interactivity. Lastly, the authors provide several novel techniques to address the issues and problems and potential directions for future researchers wishing to apply these emerging technologies to education.

The authors provide an in-depth historical perspective of VR and possibly argue that the technology is not new and has existed since the mid-1960s, primarily within the military. However, they do state that this technology was readily available to the masses in the public sector in the 1990s with the advent of video games. While presenting their methodology, they clarify what VR means and the scope of educational systems. They broadly view VR as a digital representation of a three-dimensional (3-D) object or environment and include VR systems using any form of input/output peripheral. This article reviews peer-reviewed empirical research studies during 2010–2017.

They conducted their systematic review following the process outlined by Kitchenham (2004) and searched the academic databases: ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, Web of Science, ERIC, and Scopus. From this effort, 379 candidate papers were identified for further analysis, thus, resulting in a total of 99 articles. The applied thematic analyses coded documents according to their standard features (i.e., reported issues and motivations). As commonalities and trends became increasingly evident in the data, these characteristics or ‘codes’ were categorized into overarching themes. The classification data (themes and codes) from the authors’ thematic analyses were then extracted, tabulated, and presented succinct figures within the article, with detailed figures provided as an appendix.

Notably, 40 application domains were identified 125 times, as several were notably more prevalent than others. These included health, engineering, and science applications, thus creating general-purpose educational tools. The top five are general education (18), general medicine (17), surgical education (10), safety (9), and learning difficulties (7), respectively. Regarding an application’s use and associated motivations, high frequencies were identified. VR applications were primarily used in simulations (41), access to limited resources (37), and training (31). Student motivation was led by increased immersion, followed by increased motivation and deeper learning.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the authors analyzed the reported issues and limitations identified in literature utilizing VR in education. These are categorized as overhead (training and cost), input problems (hardware usability, recognition inaccuracies, and lack of feedback), output problems (insufficient realism, software usability, and motion sickness), and usefulness (ineffectiveness and lack of engagement). Software usability (software dependent) (48.6%), lack of engagement (31.4%), and cost (28.6%) were identified as the top three issues and limitations. Therefore, attention needs to be given to overcoming existing issues and limitations. Viable interventions in the research and development of VR include usability and training, acknowledgment of system recognition inaccuracies, realism, and cost.

As hoped for in this review, they cite Mikropoulos & Natsis (2011) conducting a similar study. Therefore, this article provides another significant footprint to illustrate the benefits of VR to stakeholders. The authors’ figures provide an excellent reference point that showcases their thematic analyses. The authors offer the education field a VR Peripherals Matrix, which has been tabulated. It displays the modalities, functionalities, and specifications of many of the emergent technologies to assist stakeholders in selecting VR technologies they wish to research and pursue. These will be used as evidence to advocate for VR technologies in education within our institution and as required through consultation inquiries.