Virtual reality as pedagogical tool to enhance experiential learning: A systematic literature review

Since half of the century, technology has dominated the modern era. The rapid advancement of technology has reached generating artificial intelligence and artificial realities. So, virtual reality is an emerging technology and is applicable in education as well. Virtual reality is a computer-generated simulation, where people can interact within an artificial environment. Moreover, in an educational setting, such an environment provides students with a chance to get experiential learning. This paper has a systematic literature review on emerging technologies, such as virtual reality as a pedagogical tool for enhancing students’ experiential learning. This review aims to explore and understand the effect of virtual reality on students’ experiential learning by reviewing twenty-six selected articles. The selected studies have followed various methodologies and are from different contexts. This review study aims to present a systematic literature review for understanding and exploring the effect of virtual reality as a pedagogical tool for enhancing students’ experiential learning. Nine themes were identified, which are (a) virtual reality as pedagogical tool, (b) virtual reality as emerging educational technology tool, (c) virtual reality as digital transformation, (d) virtual reality as teaching learning model, (e) virtual reality as architectural pedagogy, (f ) virtual reality for communication skills, (g) virtual reality for reading and writing skills, (h) virtual reality for social learning, and (i) virtual reality for experiential learning. Thus, it is found that virtual reality is used as a pedagogical tool for various subject areas for encouraging involvement. It is helpful in medical, engineering, language, and social learning, as it provides a chance to get first-hand experience of the environment. Also, it helps learners to engage in a presented virtual environment and experience the sense of presence in it and enhances students’ experiential learning. Therefore, this review found virtual reality as an essential pedagogical tool for strengthening students’ experiential learning

Investigating Gender Differences in Iranian EFL Learners' Rounded Vowels

The present study investigated the gender differences in producing all English rounded vowels /u:/, /ɔ:/, /ʊ/ and /o/ in Iranian EFL learners' speech in comparison with native ones. Sixty Iranian EFL learners including 30 males and 30 females were selected as the participants of this study. Oxford proficiency test (OPT, 2001) was conducted in order to ensure the learners were truly homogenous with regard to their English proficiency level. All learners were right-handed, Persian monolingual native speakers with no brain injuries, hearing or visual problems that interfered with their performance in the test. Four words containing English round vowels with CVC syllable structure were selected and put inside the carrier sentence ''Say......please''. In fact, each learner uttered the carrier sentences separately. Via PRAAT software (win 64), the voices of the participants were recorded and analyzed for obtaining the first and the second formants (F1 and F2) of each vowel. The obtained data from male and female speeches were compared to each other to find their differences. The results showed in F2 values, there were gender differences considering the consonantal context. This study demonstrated that for males, the degree of backness of vowel /u:/ was less than that of vowel /ɔ:/, but for females it was vice versa. For both vowels, male's mean F1 was lower than female's mean F1 and male's mean F2 was higher than female's mean F2. The present study showed gender differences in producing English rounded vowels. So, the results can be used in classes which contain only one gender. The findings of this study can bring about some pedagogical implications for teaching English diphthongs, triphthongs and English rounded vowels