Background/purpose: Empirical data consistently demonstrate that social sciences education suffers from suboptimal learning outcomes, primarily due to overcrowded curricula and students' struggle to connect abstract theoretical concepts with real-world applications. Therefore, learning that implements technology to assist students in comprehending…

Background/purpose: This study addresses the growing gap in preparing pre-service teachers for immersive digital instruction, especially within metaverse environments. While many are familiar with digital platforms as learners, they often lack practical experience in managing and teaching in virtual settings. The purpose of this study is to…

This article describes the outcomes of using a scaffolded set of two digital, simulation-based approaches to support secondary mathematics and science preservice teachers (PSTs) in learning to facilitate argumentation-focused discussions. The researchers investigated PST and teacher educator (TE) impressions of the experience and collected…

Collaboration is key for success across multiple industries, including healthcare settings. In order to prepare students for contemporary and future healthcare landscapes, there is scope for higher education to embrace development of a range of capabilities for collaboration, including those that might be less visible and hard to measure. Using…

Online virtual worlds have increasingly become meeting places for students and teachers to discuss and collaborate on diverse academic subjects and practices. Furthermore, in response to the recent global COVID-19 pandemic, there has also been a heightened drive to provide online educational facilities that harness immersive virtual environments…

Gaining adequate on-farm experience can be difficult for students due to limited resources, time, and strict biosecurity protocols. This study assessed university student perceptions of the usability of a virtual reality (VR) farm tour focused on swine or dairy farming. Seventy-one participants experienced a VR farm tour. After completing the…

A quasi-experimental one group pretest-posttest design was utilized with 19 first-and-second-year doctoral occupational therapy students at a university in Tennessee to evaluate confidence, performance, benefits, challenges, and recommendations from an acute care simulation experience. Student confidence was evaluated using a researcher-developed…

Early mobility in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) can improve a multitude of patient outcomes, and occupational therapists (OTs) play a valuable role as part of the interprofessional team, with the ability to address activities of daily living, functional cognition, psychological and communication needs, and more. In 2022, the first iteration of an…

Metaverse, a virtual shared space integrating augmented reality and virtual reality technologies, is often hailed as the "Internet of the future" for its potential to revolutionize online communication, collaboration, learning, and work. However, despite its promising strategic and business applications, there is a dearth of empirical…

Purpose: Higher education is undergoing a significant transformation, demanding a rethinking of instructional methods, the establishment of novel assessment frameworks and the incorporation of state-of-the-art technologies to advance the development of learning competencies. The use of simulations is an alternative that offers satisfactory results…

This study investigated how different learning tasks influence students' collaborative interactions in immersive Virtual Reality (iVR). A set of chemistry learning activities was designed with iVR, and 35 pairs of undergraduate students went through the activities. Videos of students' interactions were analysed to identify patterns in students'…

Virtual contexts play a crucial role in assisting students' learning. Researchers have taken advantage of the potential of immersive virtual reality (VR) for situating students in inaccessible places, and for engaging them in learning activities. Meanwhile, several previous studies have reported that, in VR-based learning contexts, students'…

Three-Dimensional Virtual Worlds (3DVW) have significant promise for the development of teaching and learning environments. Educational communities have become interested in such virtual platforms, and this technology has widely benefited educational settings. This study aims to identify the factors that drive the acceptance of 3DVWs as means for…

This dissertation responds to what Sarah Kavanagh and Katie Danielson (2020) call a "raging fire of debate about the relationship between justice and practice" in the scholarship around teacher education. Expanding upon the research focusing on clinical simulations for teacher education as well as the critiques of Practice-Based Teacher…

Interest in virtual reality (VR) for teaching and learning in higher education is growing, given its many potential applications. VR offers a socially interactive environment with novel ways to engage students with materials, objects, and activities and provide students with experiences such as "field trips" that would be otherwise very…