Potentials in Using VR for Facilitating Geography Teaching in Classrooms: A Systematic Review

Abstract

The application of virtual reality (VR) in geography education is regarded as a progressive and proactive method that has still not gained sufficient attention in the educational policy in Hungary. The aim of our review is to find the ways and means to make it happen. We selected 47 works that are closely linked to geography teaching and analyzed their bibliometric (authorship and journal characteristics, types of works and applied methods, keywords, referencing, and co-citation networks) and contextual characteristics (research objectives, demographic, gender and social background, hardware and software specifications, advantages and disadvantages, conclusions, and predictions) which we expected to help us to understand the slow implementation and undeserved marginalization of VR in the curricular geography education. We used a mixed-method research analysis combining elements of quantitative and qualitative analysis using inductive reasoning. Our preliminary assumption that the application of VR technology is an effective and useful way of teaching geography was proved by our findings. The methods used by the authors of the reviewed empirical works, together with the recommended future research topics and strategies, can be applied to future empirical research on the use of VR in geography education.

Keywords

• virtual reality
• geography teaching
• public education
• educational effectiveness
• educational technology
• research methods