Educational Opportunities for Immersive Virtual Reality

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of immersive virtual environments (IVE) in education with an emphasis on immersive virtual reality (IVR). A companion chapter in this volume focuses on a second type of IVE called augmented reality (AR). First, definitions are provided, focusing on concepts such as immersion, fidelity, presence, and simulations. Second, a review of research is presented for IVR that highlights the current and potential impact in PreK-12, higher education, and professional development settings. Findings suggest the use of IVR can lead to increased engagement. However, the synthesis also points to a relative dearth of published research for PreK-12 implementation. The chapter ends with a call for future research looking at key areas like special needs, potential negative long-term effects, training for teachers and students, and exploration of key concepts like embodied cognition, computational thinking, self-tracking, spatial reasoning, and situational/individual interests within IVE.