Taxonomy of Virtual and Augmented Reality Applications in Education

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive taxonomy for virtual and augmented reality applications in education, aiming to clarify terminology and improve communication among stakeholders by categorizing technology, content, and pedagogical objectives.

Contribution

It introduces a novel, systematic methodology for constructing a taxonomy that integrates design, educational objectives, and application categories, addressing existing knowledge gaps.

Findings

Proposed a new taxonomy covering technology and content aspects.

Demonstrated taxonomy's applicability through two educational case studies.

Identified and addressed terminology confusion in VR/AR educational applications.

Abstract

This paper presents and analyses existing taxonomies of virtual and augmented reality and demonstrates knowledge gaps and mixed terminology which may cause confusion among educators, researchers, and developers. Several such occasions of confusion are presented. A methodology is then presented to construct a taxonomy of virtual reality and augmented reality applications based on a combination of: a faceted analysis approach for the overall design of the taxonomy; an existing taxonomy of educational objectives to derive the educational purpose; an information systems analysis to establish important facets of the taxonomy; and two systematic mapping studies to identify categories within each facet. Based onUsing thisthe methodology a new taxonomy is proposed and the implications of its facets (and their combinations of facets)are demonstrated. The taxonomy focuses on technology used to provide the virtual or augmented reality as well as the content presented to the user, including the type of gamification and how it is operated. It also takes into accountaccommodates a large number of devices and approaches developed throughout the years and for multiple industries, and proposes and developsprovides a way to categorize them in order to clarify communication between researchers, developers and as well as educators. Use of the taxonomy and implications of choices made during their development is then demonstrated ion two case studies:, a virtual reality chemical plant for use in chemical engineering education and an augmented reality dog for veterinary education.