A systematic review and mapping of the literature of virtual reality studies in earth science engineering education

Abstract

Today, earth sciences engineering education programs face with serious problems. It is often not possible to provide experience on different geographical environments or materials. Considering these problems of earth science related engineering education programs, virtual reality environment potentially can provide technology enhanced training alternatives. However, in the literature there are not many studies showing how virtual reality can enhance the earth science related engineering education programs. Accordingly, the aim of this mapping of the literature and systematic review study is to explore studies dealing with virtual reality in the earth sciences engineering education programs. Through a rigorous screening process, the first search in the Scopus database provided 150 studies, where 19 of them were selected in the course of this study and the mapping of the literature report was drawn with all these articles. Additionally, with seven of these articles a systematic review is conducted. The mapping of the literature report shows that studies on this topic have increased in recent years and have been published in a variety of journals. The number of China and USA origins studies are remarkable among the examined studies, which are predominantly in the fields of mining engineering and geological engineering. As a result of the in-depth analyses, the systematic review report indicates that virtual reality applications in the earth sciences engineering education positively contribute to the learning outcomes and experiences of students/trainees from different perspectives.

A Systematic Review of Virtual Reality-Based Education Research Using Latent Dirichlet Allocation: Focus on Topic Modeling Technique

“…In recent years, virtual reality has received signi cant attention as a next generation's platform even though this is not a recent new technology. Along with the increasing interest on virtual reality, cases using it as well as research studies are rapidly expanding [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. Technical developments such as head-mounted display (HMD), controllers, and motion tracking systems as well as content development that apply virtual reality to games, movies, advertisements, exhibitions in museums, and education are rapidly growing in various areas.…”

“…ese studies reviewed the previous articles to answer specific research questions for understanding important keywords or topics of the field. Some review papers focused on the trends of virtual reality-based education research related to specific fields as shown in Table 1, such as Earth science engineering education [7], medical education [8,19], STEM education [20], math education [21], computer science education [22], higher education [23][24][25], heritage education [26], rehabilitation management of breast cancer survivors [27], virtual reality-based training for daily living in patients with chronic stroke [28], PSTD treatments [29], foreign language learning gamification using virtual reality [30,31], K-12 and higher education [15,17], surgical training [32], industrial skills training [31], virtual reality cognitive training in individuals with mild cognitive impairment [16,18], science education [33,34], sensorimotor learning [35], dental education [36], virtual reality-based emotional response and symptom provocation in patients with OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) [37], nursing education [38,39], virtual reality therapy for social anxiety disorder [40], evacuation training [41], virtual reality-assisted neuromuscular therapy [42], home-based virtual reality rehabilitation for individuals with Parkinson disease [43], virtual realitybased physiology and anatomy learning [44], social work education [45], and marketing higher education …”