The technologies Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), now often referred together as Extended Realities (XR), have been used in education for some time for applications such as training ship’s captains on virtual bridges and preparing future airplane pilots for reality with the help of flight simulator training devices. Over the last ten years or so the technology has been adapted for the mass-market and the use of XR is now available for a broader range of learning scenarios.
For this special issue of the Electronic Journal of e-Learning we want to address the so-called unique affordances of XR such as the learner’s sense of presence, interaction with 3D objects, emotional design, virtual body-transfer and social collaboration capabilities (Plass et al. 2022). Accounting for such affordances in the design and operation of XR-based learning scenarios facilitates meaningful learning experiences that provide advantages over conventional learning approaches. As a result, XR-based learning scenarios can help to compensate for the increased technical, organizational and content-related issues that surround the application of XR for learning. Find out more.
