Virtual Reality (VR) has emerged as a transformative medium in education, yet its adoption remains fragmented across pedagogical models, interaction paradigms, and hardware platforms. Existing literature tends to focus on isolated case studies — individual simulators, single classroom deployments, or specific interaction techniques — without offering a unified analytical lens through which educators, designers, and researchers can evaluate trade-offs across diverse VR learning approaches. This paper addresses that gap by synthesizing eight peer-reviewed studies drawn from venues including ACM CHI, IMX, VRST, and FDG into a structured human-centered analysis. I propose the HCVR-7 framework, a comparative evaluation model that assesses VR educational approaches along seven human-factor dimensions: nature of experience, technological complexity, learning efficacy, cost and scalability, cognitive load, accessibility, and feedback mechanisms. Building on this framework, I introduce a two-axis taxonomy distinguishing content-centric from interface-centric VR and local from global design strategies, and I consolidate feedback mechanisms — tangible, visual, auditory, haptic, and affective — into a coherent design space. I further analyze the tension between narrative richness and cognitive overload in immersive storytelling, and I identify unresolved challenges in inclusivity, ethical use, and standardized learning-outcome assessment. The synthesis suggests that interface-centric design and multimodal feedback are the strongest predictors of sustained learner engagement, while scalability and cultural relevance remain open tensions. This work contributes a replicable evaluation framework intended to support educators, instructional designers, and HCI researchers in the principled adoption of VR-based learning environments.
Kathia Mercedes Villavicencio Gronerth (Thu,) studied this question.