Six Years After Google Cardboard: What Has Happened in the Classroom? A Scoping Review of Empirical Research on the Use of Immersive Virtual Reality in Secondary Education

Abstract

As virtual reality headsets have become more affordable since 2015, they are increasingly being used in educational settings. Immersive virtual reality (iVR) does offer unique learning opportunities, and making it as such an interesting instructional tool. Virtual reality technology has been used and studied widely in higher education. This scoping review aims to bring an overview of empirical studies of immersive virtual reality learning experiences in secondary education. Following the scoping review methodology by Arksey and O'Malley (2005) the databases of Web of Science and Eric were searched for relevant articles based on the following inclusion criteria: published from 2015 onwards, with an empirical ground, focussing on secondary education, using immersive virtual reality headsets, aimed at formal education and written in English or Dutch. From the initial 863 potentially relevant articles, 33 studies were investigated further, after applying the inclusion criteria. These articles were then charted and analysed closely. Most studies integrate tethered devices and focus on STEMrelated topics. Four distinct research aims could be identified: media comparison, effectiveness, design and classroom integration. Immersive virtual reality generates improved test results, mostly higher than less immersive conditions, but not always significantly higher. Several design elements were tested but often lack a theoretical grounding. Studies set up in an ecological valid classroom setting are scarce. Future research directions are suggested on the base of the findings.

Are teachers ready to immerse? Acceptance of mobile immersive virtual reality in secondary education teachers

“…However, nearly all identified factors predicting iVR acceptance by teachers can be synthetised into the factors of the UTAUT acceptance model (Venkatesh et al 2003) related to behavioural intention to use, namely performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions adding hedonic motivation from UTAUT2 (Venkatesh, Thong, and Xu 2012). This is also in line with our prior qualitative, exploratory study using UTAUT2 to investigate which factors contribute to the acceptance of mobile iVR by secondary education teachers (Boel et al 2021b). We will now discuss the factors of UTAUT2 in greater detail.…”

“…Teachers must learn to operate iVR, to integrate this into their curriculum and so on. Previous exploratory research (Boel et al 2021b;Pletz 2021) proved this to be of major concern in teachers and instructors. Social influence refers to the extent someone feels influenced by others.…”

“…Performance expectancy refers to the extent to which a person believes the technology improves working conditions. This factor seems significantly associated with behavioural intention to use iVR (Boel et al 2021b;Bower, De Witt, and Lai 2020;Khukalenko et al 2022;Sagnier et al 2020;Shen et al 2019). Effort expectancy is the extent to which a person thinks efforts are needed to use a technology.…”

“…Tethered devices on the other hand need a PC or laptop to push the content to the iVR headset, using a cable or wireless streaming. Following teachers' concerns about mobility of iVR technology (Boel et al 2021b;Fransson, Holmberg, and Westelius 2020) this study will focus on teachers' perceptions of mobile iVR solely.…”

Digital Twins and Cultural Heritage Preservation: A Case Study of Best Practices and Reproducibility in Chiesa dei SS Apostoli e Biagio

“…A watershed moment occurred with the launch of Google's Arts & Culture in 2011, which allowed virtual visits to museums, accessible to anyone with a smartphone. The company seized upon the democratizing potential of the technology with Google Cardboard in 2014, an inexpensive HMD that was quickly adopted for secondary education (Boel et al, 2021). Similar VLEs have been developed to tour real or virtual museums (VM), such as the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and the National Archeological Museum of Marche in Ancona, Gyeongju VR Museum, South Korea (Favro, 2006;Clini et al, 2018).…”