Development of effective oral presentation skills is an essential component of entrepreneurship education, but class size and time constraints can limit opportunities to practice and receive quality feedback. Immersive virtual reality can provide time- and place-independent opportunities to hone presentation skills in diverse settings with…

Traditional methods of teaching religion often fail to capture the sensory and spatial dimensions of religious practices, leaving students with abstract understandings disconnected from lived experiences. This study pilots the use of extended reality resources--immersive 360-degree videos, enhanced video interviews, and virtual tours--as tools for…

Virtual reality (VR) is an emerging technology that is gaining traction in K12 education. Whereas well-designed and engaging VR experiences may be considered educational, teacher educators with content-area expertise are uniquely positioned to analyze the actual content provided by those experiences when determining VR's educational value.…

The purpose of this article is not to provide an exhaustive literature review of learning with mobile devices, but rather offer an overview of learning with mobile devices that provides context for this special issue and its manuscripts. Methodologically, we placed more emphases on experimental or quasiexperimental design when possible, as we felt…

Virtual reality (VR) technology offers promise in enriching learning opportunities in teacher education programs. The purpose of this study was to investigate the ways immersive virtual reality has been used in teacher-training programs. This systematic review of literature examined eight studies where immersive VR was utilized to increase…

The unstructured conversations of students who chatted with Freudbot in his Second Life virtual office over a 32-month period were examined in order to better understand the nature of the virtual relationship between students and conversational agents (CA) as historical figures. This research builds on past work that examined these conversations…

In this paper, we explore role-playing and experiential learning approaches applied in an immersive virtual environment for a professional counseling distance course. Training professional counselors requires practice and therefore possesses a challenge for the distant education. Although both counseling professionals' codes of ethics provide…

Educating the public about wildlife and conservation has long been a core component of many zoos' mission statements (Patrick, Matthews, Ayers, & Tunnicliffe, 2007). However, research has demonstrated that most patrons visit zoos to be entertained and to socialize rather than to be educated. Thus, greater emphasis is now placed on encouraging…

This study compared learning performance during and following AR and non-AR topographic map instruction and practice Two-way ANOVA testing indicated no significant differences on a posttest assessment between map type and spatial ability. Prior learning activity results revealed a significant performance difference between AR and non-AR treatment…

This study set out to examine two important aspects of the use of eWriters by early elementary students. First, it explored the impact of eWriters on literacy motivation and self efficacy of students in Pre-Kindergarten, Kindergarten, and First grade. Second, it explored if and how the technology implementation would affect parent and teacher…

Pedagogical agents (PAs) are lifelike characters in virtual environments that help facilitate learning through social interactions and the virtual real relationships with the learners. This study explored whether and how PA gesture design impacts learning and agent social acceptance when used with elementary students learning foreign language…

Instructional simulation had major difficulties in the past for offering limited possibilities in practice and learning. This article proposes a link between instructional simulation and Web 2.0 technologies. More exactly, I present the design of the Virtual Olympic Games Framework (VOGF), as a significant demonstration of how interactivity in…

Distance education started being limited in comparison to traditional education. Distance teachers and educational organizations have overcome most of these limits, but some other limits still remain as challenges. One of these challenges is to collaboratively learn concepts in an immersive way, similarly to the education "in situ".…

This study was undertaken to better understand the nature of nursing students' perspectives toward simulative learning modality for gaining pre-clinical experience via self-paced cognitive tool--Avatar. Findings indicates that participants engaged in synchronous Avatar learning environment had higher levels of appreciation toward Avatar learning…

In this study, we explored a new experimental methodology for investigating children's (ages 10 to 14) stances with respect to the ethics of online identity play. We used a scenario about peer identity misrepresentation embedded in a 3D virtual game environment and randomly assigned 265 elementary students (162 female, 103 male) to three…