The Role of Interactive and Immersive Technologies in Higher Education: A Survey

Abstract

The developments in the Engineering domain have risen at an unprecedented rate in the past three decades. New technologies emerge every year and find their use case in multiple industries, also impacting the higher education as a whole. The present ecosystem demands industry-ready graduates from higher education institutes. To meet this, inculcation of newly developed technologies in the engineering education domain is a must. The retention span of Millennials in the traditional classroom settings has lowered down, posing the biggest challenge in student learning outcome at the higher education level. To solve this problem, interactive and immersive technologies has played a significant role through the use of Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Realit y (VR), and Gamification in a modern classroom setting. These technologies are capable of being used online as well as offline, and promise to deliver an enhanced user experience. The use of such tools also improves the student engagement by virtue of interactive content during the classroom session. This results in improved student learning and motivation in various domains of higher education. This paper focuses on the engineering education domain and discusses the role of these technologies in improving student understanding of intricate concepts of various engineering disciplines. A study of research papers presenting different digital learning platforms developed using these technologies from 2017 to 2021 was done, and it was concluded that the trends and technologies discussed in this paper have been tested and proven to be beneficial in engineering education. Further, developing a low-cost learning system using immersive and interactive technologies, and upgrading the present classroom set-up and skill set of instructors to make them significantly capable of utilizing the benefits offered by these technologies is yet to be achieved.