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The ability for learners to interact online via their avatars in a 3-D simulation space means that virtual worlds afford a host of educational opportunities not offered by other learning technology platforms, but their use also raises several pertinent issues that warrant consideration. This chapter reviews the educational use of virtual worlds from a design perspective. Virtual-world definitions are explored, along with their key educational characteristics. Different virtual-world environments are briefly contrasted, including Second Life, Active Worlds, Open Sim, and Minecraft. A wide variety of virtual-world uses in schools and universities are examined so as to understand their versatility. Key educational benefits of virtual worlds are distilled from the literature, such as the ability to facilitate 3-D simulations, role-plays, construction tasks, and immersive learning. Emergent issues surrounding the use of virtual worlds are also analyzed, including cognitive load, safety, and representational fidelity. One higher education and one school level vignette are provided in order to offer more detailed insight into the use of virtual worlds in practice. Recommendations for learning design and implementation are presented, based on the thematic analysis of contemporary virtual-worlds research.

The influence of digital media and information technology on architectural design education and practice is increasingly evident. There has been an astonishing shift in the way architecture is being taught and produced. Networked virtual design environments such as the virtual design studio (VDS) have been introduced in many architectural schools as new ways of teaching and learning design. Applying virtual design education in developing countries such as the Arab states brings with it various opportunities and challenges. As a new phenomenon, little research has been done to study the cultural implications of the new virtual design environments (VDE). This paper examines the new paradigm of teaching and learning design virtually and the possible cultural implications of its implementation in developing countries such as the Arab world.

The purpose of this paper is to present the process of building a model that identifies criteria that determine the quality of virtual postgraduate programs. In the Colombian context, there are no national criteria/standards to evaluate the quality of this type of program. This proposed model is implemented in a public university that has several virtual postgraduate courses within the framework of university autonomy.

This study implements a descriptive methodology through documental research based on the study of 414 documents and the analysis of 39 and research based on the design of the proposal of a quality model, its validation by experts and its application in the academic community of a public university that has virtual postgraduate courses.

The results are presented in a structure composed of 10 quality factors: coherence between programs, virtual methodology and institutional horizon; attention to students; characteristics of author teachers, virtual teachers and researchers; academic, curricular and learning processes; research, knowledge generation and production; the relationship with the environment; articulation and impact; need satisfaction and ability to generate innovation processes; internationalization, alliances and insertion in scientific and global networks; and technological resources and production of virtual contents, among others.

This model can be prospectively incorporated into processes that have adapted online training elements in health emergency contexts.

This model combines theoretical and practice aspects and the validation of experts, which contributes to the reflection on the quality of virtual programs, with criteria different from those proposed for face-to-face and distance programs.

Even though the model resulting from this inquiry responds to the situated context of a particular virtual academic program, the research perspective may be oriented to perform longitudinal studies of its implementation, as well as its adaptation to other situated contexts, including those that make use of virtual processes and means of remote education. On the other hand, it provides elements to be taken into account in the construction of educational policies on the quality of virtual programs and future research.

This paper is the result of a research project and its content is original.

This study aims to investigate emerging perspectives and challenges which teaching staff and students in the Faculties of Business and Accounting, Health and Education as well as Computing encountered in using Virtual Collaborative Learning during their classes in one accredited institution of higher education in Maseru district Lesotho. Previously conducted studies reveal that although similar studies to the current one have been conducted in different countries across the globe, conducting them in another different country such as Lesotho and in a different context might provide new information.

The study draws on Lev Vygotsky’s social constructivism as the theoretical framework because it is relevant and appropriate. The study was buttressed by constructivism paradigm, qualitative design as well as a qualitative case study. A purposive sampling technique was used in this study. A sample of 35 students and 11 teaching staff from the 3 respective faculties were used as participants of the study. This qualitative case study was based on online questionnaires issued to the participants using emails for data collection. Data were generated based on the themes which emerged.

The findings of the study suggest that majority of students found Virtual Collaborative Learning helpful and a user-friendly tool. However, lack of resources, clear instructions from the teaching staff and cooperation, internet connectivity issues, as well as data expenses have been identified as stumbling blocks that discourage students’ satisfactory engagement in Virtual Collaborative Learning. The findings further revealed various strategies including encouraging students to cooperate, grading students’ participation on online platforms and consultations could be used to overcome the challenges encountered in using Virtual Collaborative Learning. For generalisability and understanding of the breadth of the students and teaching staff experiences and challenges of Virtual Collaborative Learning, the authors recommend further study to be conducted on a larger representative sample, using the established themes of the current study.

Using face-to-face interviews and classroom observations for data collection would have been more suitable for a qualitative methodology. However, due to COVID-19 regulations that restrict contact and limit lessons on online platforms, an online questionnaire was used for data collection.

This research reveals emerging perspectives and challenges which are encountered by teaching staff and students while using Virtual Collaborative Learning in one institution of higher education in Maseru Lesotho.

The changing clinical landscape in psychiatry, both before and after the pandemic, has impacted students’ direct contact with psychiatric patients. It is imperative, therefore, that medical education keeps pace with evolving clinical pathways to ensure that clinicians are always appropriately trained not just for common presentations but also for low-prevalence, high-risk situations. Simulated-based training is well established. However, it is not without its limitations, many of which could be overcome with the use of virtual simulation. This study aims to analyse the use of virtual simulation within medical education to train clinicians in psychiatric assessments.

A scoping review was undertaken with a comprehensive literature search of the six most relevant online peer-reviewed databases, including PubMed, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Medline, EMBASE and Cochrane. All published papers in English that discussed simulation in teaching psychiatric assessments were included.

Virtual patients can be used for educational, diagnostic and therapy purposes attributable to advances in speech-recognition technology. Virtual simulations are well received and positively affect clinicians’ knowledge and skill development. Educational faculties should consider using virtual simulation technologies to improve learning outcomes. Further studies should enhance the fidelity and quality of virtual assessment simulation situations, mainly focusing on the virtual patient’s empathy, gesturing and body language to enable this evidence-based tool to be used effectively and efficiently for the benefit of future patient care.

The changing clinical landscape in psychiatry, both before and after the pandemic, has impacted students’ direct contact with psychiatric patients. This scoping review has reviewed the use of virtual simulation-based education to train clinicians for psychiatric assessments. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work has not been conducted before.

Healthcare employs informatics to offer its services through information technology where the social network can aid virtual medical learning. Since the usage of the internet and other electronic tools for medical services delivery is at the initial stage, it is essential to examine the factors that condition patients and medical elements in a virtual environment can develop relationship models on the health services. So, the authors have systematically reviewed virtual medical learning and offered some suggestions for the upcoming works. The authors have also discovered gaps in the state-of-the-art papers and provided solutions for them.

Numerous novel advancements have changed the old exercise of therapeutic and analytic learning. Virtual spaces have quickly turned into a section of the learning technology vision. Given the importance of its achievements and endless low-cost expansion of the educational system, virtual education has been considered as one of the issues raised by the information communities. Medicine and health are some of the most important fields in virtual technologies. Hence, in this paper, we have used a systematic literature review to deeply examine virtual medical learning. After establishing exclusion and inclusion criteria, an independent systematic search in Google Scholar, ACM, Scopus, Eric, Science Direct, Springer link, Emerald, Global ProQuest and IEEE for relevant studies have been performed, and 21 papers have been analyzed. Detailed data have been mined out of the papers.

The authors have found that virtual medical learning improves and expands the knowledge core and meaningfully affects the exercise. Virtual learning (VL) has been used in many therapeutic zones, like therapeutic learning, surgery, diagnosing, combining and regularizing processes. It has presented a fundamental access point and a referral mechanism for all of a course's component communities. It can also simplify communicative education, allowing learners to get abilities before applying them in a real-world situation. Also, the communicative characteristics of different VL programs can somehow be like direct teaching.

Some excellent work may be removed owing to applying the filters to select the primary papers. Surveying all the documents on the topic of virtual medical learning is impossible, too. Nevertheless, the authors have tried to present a perfect survey of virtual medical learning. The results will be helpful for scholars to propose better virtual medical learning techniques.

E-learning has become an indispensable additional learning tool in medical education. The introduction of new learning technologies, the exponential growth of Internet usage and the advent of the World Wide Web can change the face of higher education. The results will be helpful for scholars for the upcoming works. The application of a literature review of partial least squares theory was useful for offering comprehensive literary coverage and completing the knowledge development analysis. The authors have backed scholars and experts for better understanding the development of virtual medical learning systems via presenting comparative data and scrutinizing the present advances.

The paper enhances intellectual knowledge by improving the conception of virtual medical learning. It informs the development, use of virtual medical learning and the upcoming works. The lack of comprehensive papers in this field has increased the importance of this paper. The present paper can handle the pace of publications.

The onus of this study was to find out the role played by virtual learning environment factors on students' satisfaction during the COVID-19 period in Nigeria. A survey was carried out on students in higher education institutions in Nigeria to actualize this purpose.

Simple random sampling techniques with the aid of Krejcie and Morgan's (1970) sample determinant and the Snowball sampling technique were adopted to sample 270 students in higher education institutions in Nigeria. An adapted questionnaire was used. Cronbach alpha coefficients were calculated for the two sections of the independent and dependent variables. Virtual learning environment factors yielded 0.89, while students' satisfaction yielded 0.87. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson product–moment correlation, two-way ANOVA and linear regression analysis.

The results of the ANOVA, F (df 4, 265) = 50.905, p < 0.000, indicate a statistically significant relationship (stronger than 0.05) between the independent variables (virtual learning environment factors) and the dependent variable (students' satisfaction). It was found among others that instructors' support and collaboration factors predicted students' satisfaction with virtual learning experiences during the COVID-19 period.

Virtual learning during COVID-19 caught both lecturers and students unprepared. Most developing countries especially Africans were used to the traditional face-to-face learning, more so, the use of virtual means to learn was still at a nascent stage. This study, therefore, contributed to the role of the learning environment in virtual learning satisfaction.

This paper considers the available documentation on the Virtual Colombo Plan (or VCP for short), launched by the World Bank and the Australian Government in 2001. The Plan is one of the World Bank’s key projects for encouraging greater use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in developing countries, with a focus on the using ICTs for education, as well as for economic benefits.

Recent research on immersive experiences in online environments for higher education has attributed a fundamental role to two distinct yet connected psychological phenomena: the feelings of being virtually present in the education environment, often simply called presence, and peak episodes of flow. The authors conceptually delimitate these two psychological facets of e-learners’ experiences and examine their interplay. The authors show how flow episodes are elicited by students’ sense of control over the online education environment, their attention being focussed on the learning tasks, and their feelings of being physically placed in the online education setting. Also, the interactivity created by the online education environment evokes an e-learner’s imagery, which in turn triggers presence feelings and episodes of flow. The authors further show that, although presence and flow are triggered by some common antecedents, they differ in the object of the individual’s immersion, and that presence feelings facilitate flow. Moreover, the authors provide practical recommendations for higher education institutions, policy makers and the academic and information and communication technology community involved in e-learning, to make sure e-learner experiences reach their fullest potential.

This research aims to examine the impact of virtual learning platforms and instructor presence (IP) on learner satisfaction (LS). Further, this study examines the role of learner engagement (LE) in order to improve the LS.

This research uses both primary and secondary data sources to compile the research's findings. The primary source of data includes 610 responses from various higher education institutes in India. The collected data were analysed using the partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) technique.

This research provides evidence that the theoretical model is accurate with the gathered data sample. In the model, online platform (OP) is an independent variable, whereas LS is a dependent variable, and IP and LE are the mediating variables. The outcomes demonstrated that OP has a positive impact on IP and LE. Also, the relationships between IP and LE, IP and LS and LE and LS are significantly positive. The mediation analysis validates the importance of the IP and LE for relationships.

This investigation presents a comprehensive model, which demonstrates the relationship between OP, IP, LE and LS. The study makes a unique reference to several theories in order to boost interaction and IP in virtual learning, the learner's learning experience can be enhanced. The model helps teachers and educational institutions formalise strategies to boost interaction and examine the institutions' pedagogy to enhance satisfaction.