The use of virtual environments as pedagogical tools within the domain of education has become an increasingly popular phenomenon over the last few decades especially. However, the uses and effects of virtual environments as pedagogical tools within the specific domain of engineering education have not been explored in extensive detail. The limited body of current research regarding the uses of virtual environments in engineering education affords a unique opportunity. This review provides an overview and synthesis of the uses of virtual reality within the domain of engineering education through the systematic analysis of journal articles and conference proceedings published across two databases (IEEE Xplore and Scopus) between 2015 and 2019. In summary, 17 studies were analysed utilising a systematic approach and using a coding scheme including four main categories and 12 binary items. The findings indicate an escalation in the use of virtual classroom environments as supplementary to traditional teaching environments, as well as reported substantial benefits to cognitive and skill‐based learning outcomes. The findings suggest that evaluation metrics and processes that lack clarity, together with unrealistic virtual scenarios and small evaluation sample sizes, may confound comparison and, hence, the reported substantive and beneficial use of virtual reality environments in engineering education. Scholars and educators within the domain of engineering education should continue investigating the uses and merits of virtual reality environments as pedagogical tools, taking these issues into consideration.

中文翻译：

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虚拟现实在工程教育中的应用综述

尤其是在过去的几十年里，将虚拟环境用作教育领域内的教学工具已成为一种日益流行的现象。然而，虚拟环境作为工程教育特定领域内的教学工具的用途和影响尚未得到广泛详细的探讨。当前关于虚拟环境在工程教育中的使用的有限研究提供了一个独特的机会。本综述通过对 2015 年至 2019 年间在两个数据库（IEEE Xplore 和 Scopus）上发表的期刊文章和会议记录进行系统分析，对虚拟现实在工程教育领域的使用进行了概述和综合。总而言之，使用系统方法和编码方案分析了 17 项研究，包括四个主要类别和 12 个二进制项目。研究结果表明，虚拟教室环境作为传统教学环境的补充使用有所增加，并报告了对认知和基于技能的学习成果的实质性好处。研究结果表明，缺乏清晰的评估指标和流程，以及不切实际的虚拟场景和小评估样本量，可能会混淆比较，因此，可能会混淆虚拟现实环境在工程教育中的实质性和有益使用。工程教育领域的学者和教育工作者应继续研究虚拟现实环境作为教学工具的用途和优点，