Virtual Laboratories for Science Education: a Systematic Review

Abstract

A systematic review has been carried out, adopting Newman and Gough's model and the guidelines of the PRISMA statement, with the aim of characterising the scientific production on virtual laboratories in the teaching of experimental sciences in secondary education. The aim was to answer six research questions on virtual laboratories. The search was carried out in three databases: Scopus, ERIC and WoS. A total of 221 articles were identified, of which 38 were selected as they met all the inclusion criteria. The findings show that the most frequent virtual laboratory used in the research is PhET, the most common subject is Physics, and the most analyzed age group is 16 years old. Furthermore, it was found that the use of virtual laboratories yielded positive results in most of the cases in which they were applied.