Logo
ScienceStack
Table of Contents
Fetching ...
Sign In

Review Ecosystems to access Educational XR Experiences: a Scoping Review

Shaun Bangay, Adam P. A. Cardilini, Sophie McKenzie, Maria Nicholas, Manjeet Singh

TL;DR

This scoping review analyzes established game-review ecosystems to inform the design of eduXR experiential review ecosystems, aiming to help educators identify and deploy XR experiences aligned with curricular goals. By mapping form, utilization, and ecosystem management across sources, the paper derives a flexible guideline framework and a case-study prototype for teacher-focused eduXR reviews. It highlights incentives, governance, and quality considerations essential for sustainable, credible reviews that can scale across education contexts. The work proposes a structured path toward reliable, replicable eduXR reviews that support decision-making, pedagogical integration, and collaborative improvement of XR teaching resources.

Abstract

Educators, developers, and other stakeholders face challenges when creating, adapting, and utilizing virtual and augmented reality (XR) experiences for teaching curriculum topics. User created reviews of these applications provide important information about their relevance and effectiveness in supporting achievement of educational outcomes. To make these reviews accessible, relevant, and useful, they must be readily available and presented in a format that supports decision-making by educators. This paper identifies best practices for developing a new review ecosystem by analyzing existing approaches to providing reviews of interactive experiences. It focuses on the form and format of these reviews, as well as the mechanisms for sharing information about experiences and identifying which ones are most effective. The paper also examines the incentives that drive review creation and maintenance, ensuring that new experiences receive attention from reviewers and that relevant information is updated when necessary. The strategies and opportunities for developing an educational XR (eduXR) review ecosystem include methods for measuring properties such as quality metrics, engaging a broad range of stakeholders in the review process, and structuring the system as a closed loop managed by feedback and incentive structures to ensure stability and productivity. Computing educators are well-positioned to lead the development of these review ecosystems, which can relate XR experiences to the potential opportunities for teaching and learning that they offer.

Review Ecosystems to access Educational XR Experiences: a Scoping Review

TL;DR

This scoping review analyzes established game-review ecosystems to inform the design of eduXR experiential review ecosystems, aiming to help educators identify and deploy XR experiences aligned with curricular goals. By mapping form, utilization, and ecosystem management across sources, the paper derives a flexible guideline framework and a case-study prototype for teacher-focused eduXR reviews. It highlights incentives, governance, and quality considerations essential for sustainable, credible reviews that can scale across education contexts. The work proposes a structured path toward reliable, replicable eduXR reviews that support decision-making, pedagogical integration, and collaborative improvement of XR teaching resources.

Abstract

Educators, developers, and other stakeholders face challenges when creating, adapting, and utilizing virtual and augmented reality (XR) experiences for teaching curriculum topics. User created reviews of these applications provide important information about their relevance and effectiveness in supporting achievement of educational outcomes. To make these reviews accessible, relevant, and useful, they must be readily available and presented in a format that supports decision-making by educators. This paper identifies best practices for developing a new review ecosystem by analyzing existing approaches to providing reviews of interactive experiences. It focuses on the form and format of these reviews, as well as the mechanisms for sharing information about experiences and identifying which ones are most effective. The paper also examines the incentives that drive review creation and maintenance, ensuring that new experiences receive attention from reviewers and that relevant information is updated when necessary. The strategies and opportunities for developing an educational XR (eduXR) review ecosystem include methods for measuring properties such as quality metrics, engaging a broad range of stakeholders in the review process, and structuring the system as a closed loop managed by feedback and incentive structures to ensure stability and productivity. Computing educators are well-positioned to lead the development of these review ecosystems, which can relate XR experiences to the potential opportunities for teaching and learning that they offer.
Paper Structure (66 sections, 13 figures)

This paper contains 66 sections, 13 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Rationale
  3. Terminology
  4. Objectives
  5. Method
  6. Protocol
  7. Eligibility criteria
  8. Information sources
  9. Search
  10. Phase 1: Establish search criteria
  11. Phase 2: Exhaustive search
  12. Phase 3: Snowballing and saturation
  13. Selection of sources of evidence
  14. Data items
  15. Synthesis of results
  16. ...and 51 more sections

Figures (13)

  • Figure 1: Finding reviews for virtual reality experiences is challenging as illustrated using Google search trends. Despite the limited validity of this data source, it does illustrate that while “ virtual reality” is a well known concept, and “ game review” is also a common search term, the use of “ virtual reality review” is almost nonexistent in comparison.
  • Figure 2: The overlap between concepts related to eduXR and serious games.
  • Figure 3: Results returned from each search stage.
  • Figure 4: Flow diagram summarizing the search and screening steps.
  • Figure 5: Format: the forms and formats of $\textit{experiential}\ \textit{review}$s
  • ...and 8 more figures