Investigation of Devices Used in Virtual Reality Applications For Education Purposes in Terms of Immersion

Technological developments enable the use of different tools and methods for educational purposes. When the relevant literature is examined, it is seen that virtual reality (VR) technology is becoming more and more preferred for educational purposes with increasing usage rates in recent years. VR is a technology that allows individuals to pass from a physical environment to a virtual environment by stimulating different sensory organs. In this study, the devices used in the studies conducted for educational purposes with VR applications, their features and opportunities were examined in terms of their immersion effects (creating the feeling of being in the virtual environment by cutting the connection of individual with the physical environment with certain limitations). In the scope of the study, 30 papers published in the Scopus database between the years 2013-2017, which include devices that have immersion effect and containing the words "virtual reality" in title and "education" in title, abstract and keywords fields were analysed with content analysis. It is seen that, in all of the studies visual sense, in 50% sense of hearing and in 47% sense of touch was addressed with the devices. Study that addressed the sense of smell is not found. It was determined that 43% of the studies included in the study had full immersion SG applications and 53% had semi-submerged SG applications. In terms of the used system type, VR glasses (head mounted display-HMD) was preferred in 66% of the studies and virtual caves (cave automatic virtual environment - CAVE) were used in 10%. All the findings of the analyses were given in detail. This study is thought to be a guide resource for researchers working on VR in the field of education