Abstract Hands-on laboratories are essential to acquire skills in education. However, they can be costly, lack flexibility, and do not allow one to do an unlimited number of experiments. Virtual and remote laboratories represent an interesting alternative to traditional hands-on lab sessions. On the other hand, fostering collaboration between learners and between learners and teachers is an important aspect to develop in these virtual and remote laboratories, as it enhances learning. This systematic literature review presents an extensive overview of previous research about fostering collaboration in educational virtual and remote laboratories. Results of this study show that communication and group awareness tools are generally well integrated into remote and virtual laboratories. These tools foster collaborative learning as they enable users to communicate, to be aware of the presence and the actions of the other members of the group and to share knowledge. However, tools for guiding and regulating collaboration are poorly integrated in the laboratories. These tools are yet useful to foster collaborative learning as they respectively give instructions to collaborate effectively and information about the state of collaboration to regulate it. This review also identified a minority of studies that assessed the quality of collaboration and learning in laboratories. Future research should put more emphasis in investigating guidance and regulation tools, as well as integrating studies to evaluate collaboration and learning in educational remote and virtual laboratories.
Kurtz et al. (Wed,) studied this question.