Meta-Analysis Assessing the Effects of Virtual Reality Training on Student Learning and Skills Development
Catalina Castillo-Castro, Diego F. Angel‐Urdinola, A.M. Araujo Hoyos
Abstract
Training using virtual reality has been applied in many fields \nof education, but primarily in the fields of health and safety, \nengineering and technical education, and general education. \nNumerous studies assessing the use of immersive training \nin education have yielded promising results in educational \noutcomes, but there is not yet in the literature a systematic \nanalysis of the effects of virtual reality training on student \nlearning. This paper presents a meta-analysis of the results of \navailable studies that assess virtual reality training’s impact \non student learning and skills development, and which rely \non robust evaluation methods. The study’s primary purpose \nis to identify the extent to which immersive training can \nsuccessfully develop students’ skills across different fields of \neducation and the size of the effects encountered. The analysis \npresented here relies on 31 primary studies and more \nthan 90 experiments. The results indicate that, on average, \nvirtual reality training is more effective than traditional \ntraining in developing technical, practical, and socio-emotional \nskills. The results are particularly promising in fields \nrelated to health and safety, engineering, and technical \neducation. The results also indicate that students who are \nexposed to virtual reality training are more efficient in using \ninputs and time and/or avoiding performance errors than \nstudents receiving traditional training.