An Overview of Enhancing Distance Learning Through Augmented and Virtual Reality Technologies
This is an incremental overview for educators and researchers, summarizing existing challenges and potential solutions without introducing new methods or data.
The paper identifies four main challenges in distance learning—lack of social interaction, reduced engagement, comprehension issues, and limited instructor resources—and explores how AR/VR technologies could address these, while outlining needed future research.
Although distance learning presents a number of interesting educational advantages as compared to in-person instruction, it is not without its downsides. We first assess the educational challenges presented by distance learning as a whole and identify 4 main challenges that distance learning currently presents as compared to in-person instruction: the lack of social interaction, reduced student engagement and focus, reduced comprehension and information retention, and the lack of flexible and customizable instructor resources. After assessing each of these challenges in-depth, we examine how AR/VR technologies might serve to address each challenge along with their current shortcomings, and finally outline the further research that is required to fully understand the potential of AR/VR technologies as they apply to distance learning.