Collaborative Virtual Environment for Distant and Blended Learning in the Higher Education Setting: A Systematic Review

Collaborative virtual environment (CVE) is a set of technologies that enable collaborative activities in virtual scenarios while users can participate in such activities remotely via various interfaces. The unique features of CVE make it a promising tool for distant and blended learning, especially when considering the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on conventional face-to-face learning and the much-improved accessibility of the relevant technologies nowadays. This paper reports a systematic reviewon this emerging area and aims to answer four research questions related to the subject areas being covered, instructional and pedagogical methods, interface technology and virtual world design, and learning outcomes and effectiveness. After applying the selection criteria, a total number of 11 studies, which were published between 1 January 2017 and 31 December 2021, were included in our analysis and discussion. Our findings support the use of CVE in the higher education setting and suggest further investigating the underlying mechanism of learning in CVE, exploring the potential and unique benefits of CVE in practicing distant and blended learning, studying the roles of teachers in CVEs, and evaluating the learning effectiveness on larger samples and through longitudinal studies.