Virtual Reality, a Telepresence Technique Applied to Distance

Education: A Systematic Mapping Review

Luis Guevara

, Jonathan Yépez

and Graciela Guerrero

1,2 c

Departamento de Ciencias de la Computación, Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas ESPE, Sangolquí, Ecuador

Departamento de Sistemas Informáticos, Universidad de Castilla – La Mancha, Campus Universitario s/n., Albacete,

Spain

Keywords: Virtual Reality, Telepresence, Teleconference, Education Distance, Systematic Mapping Review.

Abstract: The growing demand for innovation in education coupled with the advancement of visualization technologies

has led to a large number of people and researchers becoming interested in immersive technologies, the use

of virtual reality, which offers opportunities and challenges in the education sector, in so doing, the

advancement of hardware and software has made it possible to incorporate this technology into teaching

strategies. The present work details a systematic mapping review, which gathers existing scientific

documentation on virtual reality in the field of education, as well as describing the methodology used to carry

out this review, it also sets out the results and conclusions obtained at the end of the review.

1 INTRODUCTION

Virtual Reality (VR) has been and is an important

branch in Computer Science, which has been studied

since the beginning of the 20th century (Zhou & Deng,

2009). VR technology focuses on generating virtual

environments by allowing the simulation of physical

presence in a specific location in the real world, users

can access this technology through the use of several

special devices that allow recreating sensory, visual,

hearing and even olfactory experiences. This

technology has three main characteristics: immersion,

interaction and imagination (Heng, Cheng, & Wong,

2004), on these VR has been applied in various fields

such as the military or medical, but above all it has been

applied in education (Pantelidis, 2010).

In the field of education, VR has created

opportunities in terms of distance, diversity and

disability, so it has been explored how education can

go hand in hand with VR in order to improve the

cognitive skills of people who use this type of

technology (Brown, Turkay, & Sitbon, 2018). In

higher education, VR applications need to be updated

frequently to be always driving better practices in

teaching (Liu, et al., 2019). This technology brought

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9186-3570

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1510-9274

https://orcid.org/ 0000-0002-0903-734X

about several changes in the traditional higher

education industry. By using this technology,

students can be offered a visual experience that

transcends the barriers of so-called distance education

(Liu, et al., 2019). Most of the articles present projects

developed with VR or try to explain how VR can

improve the skills of people who use this technology,

however, there are articles that also explain how this

technology can serve to include people who have

some type of disability, as mentioned by (Paudyal,

Banerjee, Hu, & Gupta, 2019), in addition, he

mentions that in online classes students lack the

shared context losing the benefits of collaborative

learning. The purpose of this paper is to collect as

much information as possible from experiments or

projects that deal with VR in education.

The continuation of this document is structured as

follows: i.) Section two explains the methodology for

conducting the systematic mapping review, defines the

research questions, study search and data extraction.

ii.) Section three provides answers to the research

questions. iii.) Section four gives way to discussion of

the topic and results for future contributions, and iv.)

Section five details the conclusions obtained once the

investigation has been completed, ending with the

Guevara, L., Yépez, J. and Guerrero, G.

Virtual Reality, a Telepresence Technique Applied to Distance Education: A Systematic Mapping Review.

DOI: 10.5220/0009561805870591

In Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2020) - Volume 2, pages 587-591

ISBN: 978-989-758-423-7

587

reference section, where all the documents used for the

development of the present are evidenced.

2 METHODOLOGY

The first reason to carry out a systematic mapping

review is to know what has been researched on the

subject, carrying out an extensive analysis of the

literature, in this case related to VR and its use within

the educational field, in order to provide a synthesis

of information corresponding to the projects and

experiments carried out according to a filter generated

with the inclusion criteria. The second reason is to be

able to identify the tools most used in the

development of VR applications. The third reason is

to identify the areas of study and propose future

systematic mapping reviews within these.

The present study was carried out following

certain steps described in the template for a mapping

study protocol, as mentioned by Fernández in her

article (Fernández-Sotos, et al., 2018) and the

guidelines recommended by (Velásquez, 2015).

2.1 Research Directives

In this section, following the phases outlined above,

the research questions are defined. Within this

systematic mapping review the protocol to be

followed is defined, which starts with preliminary

research questions, search strategies, document

selection criteria and data extraction. In addition, the

synthesis of the selected papers will serve to answer

the research questions posed. Finally, the protocol

includes tables showing research interest in the

identified areas of study.

The research questions (RQ) for this systematic

mapping review are as follows:

RQ1. How many documents related to VR in edu-

cation have been published? What is the time trend?

As mentioned in the introduction to this

document, there are a large number of publications

related to VR experiments and projects, however, we

would like to know the amount of literature that exists

involving this technology in education.

RQ2. What areas of knowledge are involved with

VR?

In addition to being a technology applied to video

games, VR is also applied to the development of this

and other areas, hence the importance of knowing the

areas of knowledge that involve the technology.

RQ3. What are the tools and what VR devices are

used most regularly for the development of VR

applications?

It is important to know which development tools

are most commonly used, as well as which devices

users use to have a VR experience.

2.2 Data Collection

The method for searching for studies leads to

including studies that are relevant to answer the

research questions, while excluding irrelevant

documents. The search involves querying different

databases by referring to search strings customized

for this purpose, followed by filtering results using

inclusion and exclusion criteria. In this case, two

investigators are responsible for the execution of the

search plan.

2.2.1 Source Selection and Search String

Due to the fact that the topic to be dealt with is a

technical one and that it includes engineering areas, it

was considered to carry out the search in 3 digital

databases, being these the following ones: Scopus

(Elsevier), IEEE Explore (Institute of Electrical and

Electronic Engineering Digital Library) and ACM

(Association for Computing Machinery).

From the defined research questions, keywords

were identified, which will form the search string, it

should be noted, that search strings can be formed

using synonyms of the defined keywords. For this

purpose, search strings were used in each of the

databases, this is detailed in Table 1.

Table 1: Search strings used in each digital database.

Database Search String

IEEE (((("All Metadata": virtual reality) OR "All

Metadata": telepresence) OR "All Metadata":

teleconference) AND "All Metadata”:

education)

ACM ((virtual reality) OR (telepresence) OR

(teleconference)) AND (education)

SCOPUS TITLE-ABS-KEY ((“virtual reality" OR

"telepresence” OR “teleconference") AND

"education") AND PUBYEAR < 2016

2.2.2 Source Selection and Search String

After having defined the search strings to be used in

the databases chosen for this review, inclusion criteria

were defined in order to filter those documents that

are not in the context of the topic presented.

Based on the aforementioned inclusion criteria are the

following: I1 Documents that contain at least two key

words in their title; I2 Documents that have been

published in the last 10 years and I3 Documents in

English.

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On the other hand, the exclusion criteria are as

follows: E1 Documents not indexed in at least two

databases; E2 Documents containing opinions and E3

Documents that do not contemplate the use of VRs.

2.2.3 Search Process

As shown in Figure 1. The search string was used in

each of the digital databases, where different amounts

of documents were obtained in each database. After

going through a filtering process with the inclusion

and exclusion criteria, 331 documents were obtained.

Then, a parallel and independent reading was carried

out by the researchers to filter the final documents,

selecting only the articles that had information

regarding the application of VR in education, later in

the meetings of the researchers the debate was

discussed. Finally, the content of the 17 documents is

read by the two researchers independently in order to

have an in-depth knowledge of each document.

Figure 1: Documents obtained from each database

consulted.

In general, a final set of 17 documents is produced at

this stage of the systematic mapping review (Table 2).

Table 2: Search and filtering of documents.

Before applying

criteria

After

filter I

After

filter II

IEEE 1342 82 3

ACM 4212 25 10

SCOPUS 4509 224 4

Total 10063 331 17

3 RESULTS

Finally, the 17 documents were selected in

accordance with the described process, and it is

emphasized that these documents were selected in

such a way that the two researchers agreed.

The synthesis of information from each of the

selected documents is then used to answer the

research questions.

3.1 Research Directives Overview of

Selected Papers

The summary of the papers is presented according to

the evaluation approach, in this case, the evaluation

approach biases to know the number of published

documents that relate VR to education and also to

know the growth or decrease of the interest of

researchers on this subject.

3.2 Number of Documents Published

and Time Trend

RQ1: How many documents related to VR in edu-

cation have been published? What is the time trend?

Figure 2: Journal and congresses of published articles.

Figure 2 shows the number of articles relating to

VR in education, as well as the main places where

they were exhibited.

The period within the inclusion criteria is between

2009 and 2019, in these years have been obtained a

total of 331 works related to RV in education were

published. It was observed that there is a temporal

trend which can be seen in Figure 3.

RQ2: What areas of knowledge are involved in VR

and application development with this technology?

The areas covered by the publications, especially

those related to VR in education (331) are various,

and areas such as education, computer science,

information technology and engineering in general

have been identified, however, there are areas such as

psychology that are also involved on a smaller scale,

and an article was found that talks about the

importance of VR as an assistive technology to help

people with special abilities, since it can compensate

Virtual Reality, a Telepresence Technique Applied to Distance Education: A Systematic Mapping Review

589

for the effects of a disability (Buzio, Chiesa, &

Toppan, 2017). In this sense, (Paudyal, Banerjee, Hu,

& Gupta, 2019) proposes a VR application which

aims to facilitate the performance of a live class

focused on hearing impaired people. Figure 4 shows

the knowledge areas involved within the VR,

comparing them with the articles selected at the end

of the search phase. The evaluation criteria in this

figure correspond to: author's articles (Ib), articles

that cite an author (IIa) and reviews (IIb). These

evaluation criteria were created by the researchers in

charge, with the purpose of making known the areas

that are most involved in virtual reality projects in the

field of education. As shown in Figure 4, the results

obtained show that the areas that are most associated

with virtual reality are Computer Science, HCI and

Education, which is a clear indicator that the line of

research is within the area of study of the researchers.

Figure 3: Temporal trend.

RQ3: What are the tools and what VR devices are

used most regularly for the development of VR

applications?

Regarding the design of virtual reality

environments, (Stavroulia, 2019) defines a project in

which an application is developed using the Unity 3D

platform in real time, accessories such as HTC VIVE

(HTC, 2019) and OculusRift (Facebook

Technologies, 2019) appear as VR devices, with the

aim of improving the empathy skills of the

participants and stating that the participants indicated

that the sense of presence was achieved. The study

conducted by (Miyata, Umemoto, & Higuchi, 2009)

defines some tools used in a prototype, however, the

author considers that the method to perform a VR

application can also be a tool and defines it as a

comprehensive method that requires several skills,

which is why teamwork is necessary. This kind of

tools and models recommended by certain authors

may or may not be considered when developing a VR

application, however, this information remains as a

background in case there are readers interested in VR

application development.

Figure 4: Knowledge areas within VR.

4 DISCUSSION

The present systematic mapping review is a work that

shows the literary background to start in the

development of a VR application. The documents

published in recent years (2009-2019) have produced

certain results, which have been set out in the answers

to the research questions. The dominance of the high

impact publications that have been selected is

evidence that the results point to an important degree

of maturity within this review process. Table 3 shows

the documents with the most citations.

Table 3: Documents with a greater number of citations.

Article name Citations

A Novel Earthquake Education System Based

on Virtual Reality

Realidade Virtual como Intervenção na

Síndrome de Down: uma Perspectiva de Ação

na Interface Saúde e Educação

Adopting virtual reality as a medium for

software development process education

An Education Method for VR Content

Creation Using Groupwork

ConstruiRV: constructing knowledge using

the virtual reality

Creating Compelling Virtual Reality and

Interactive Content for Higher Education: A

Case Study with Carnegie Mellon University

Educational Virtuality: Cognitive Benefits,

Design Processes and New Frontiers

Successful education for AEC professionals:

case study of applying immersive game-like

virtual reality interfaces

Teaching Methodology for Virtual Reality

Practical Course in Engineering Education

Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality for

Education: Panel

Virtual Reality for Special Educational Needs

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As for the empirical evaluation approach, it has a

level of quality evidence due to the research model

that was carried out, the quality of the evidence is

purely scientific. With respect to the temporal

evolution of the number of publications in the last 10

years, this has been an increase that is not as

progressive as could be seen in Figure 4, there are

seasons in which VR research tends to stagnate, and

however, there is a growth in research in small jumps

of about two years.

Regarding the management of tools, there are

documents that specify the tools and materials used in

the project, however, most studies focus more on

explaining the changes obtained by implementing

virtual reality in a given environment, this is because,

in theory, is what must be exposed for the project to

be taken as relevant or not.

5 CONCLUSIONS

This systematic review shows a growing interest in

VR research, the different approaches that it may

have are those that necessarily have to be defined at

the time of conducting a review on this topic. Proof

of this is the progressive increase in the number of

published investigations as well as the number of

citations of certain articles, which can be said, now

are the basis when it comes to talking about Virtual

Reality.

In the field of education, VR has been gradually

incorporated. This does not mean that there is a lack

of interest on the part of researchers or developers in

relating VR to education, but rather that, in order to

implement this technology in the education process,

other areas of research such as teaching, psychology

and others need to be considered. However, it was

observed that RV has been implemented in certain

case studies and has been considered to include

people with disabilities in learning processes. On the

other hand, the research process has focused on the

study of the educational domains where VR is

involved.

Finally, an important article should be pointed out

within the articles analysed in this research paper,

since it mentions the use of virtual reality as an

inclusion tool, allowing people with some type of

disability to enter the educational system, which It is

one more reason why we should continue analysing

the use of virtual reality not only in the educational

field but also as a tool to include people with some

type of disability in society.

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