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Towards a Taxonomy of Virtual Reality Usage in Education: A Systematic Review

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Abstract

Virtual reality market is undergoing a rapid extension and continually evolves with technological advancements. Today it is populated with solutions which are complex in terms of interaction and graphics. One such example is applications for educational purposes, a distinct class of VR solutions, development of which implies consideration of multiple disciplines. However, there is still no standard general-purposes classification of those solutions. Different interested parties develop separate and mosaic categorizations based on their field, audience and purposes. This paper reviews reported classification schemes of using virtual reality for learning and summarizes them towards a taxonomy. It tries to implement a multidisciplinary approach, without focusing on one particular aspect, but rather integrating prospects from such fields as human-computer interaction, pedagogy, psychology, and technology. The paper provides a brief overview of existing veins of VR research on education and training as well as proposes relevant research directions.

Keywords

Systematic review Virtual reality Learning Educational technology Classification 
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Notes

Acknowledgements

The results are based on the works within the project “D-Masterguide” which was funded under the project reference 01PZ16010F by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung within the subsection “Digitale Medien in der beruflichen Bildung”. The authors would like to express their gratitude as well to the European Social Fund (ESF) by the European Union for co-funding.

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© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.AWS-Institute for Digitized Products and ProcessesSaarbrückenGermany

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