Yiyu Cai (editor) - Virtual and Augmented Reality, Simulation and Serious Games for Education (Gaming Media and Social Effects)

The scope of this book series is inter-disciplinary and it covers the technical aspect of gaming (software and hardware) and its social effects (sociological and psychological). This book series serves as a quick platform for publishing top-quality books on emerging or hot topics in gaming and its social effects. The series is also targeted at different levels of exposition, ranging from introductory tutorial to advanced research topics, depending on the objectives of the authors.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11864

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

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This book results from the fourth Asia-Europe Symposium on Simulation and Serious Games (EASSSG). The EASSSG alternates between Europe and Asia with the first held at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore [] in Beijing Normal University at Zuhai as part of the ACM SIGGRAPH International Conference on Virtual-Reality Continuum and Applications in Industry and the fourth at the University of Turku, Finland. The symposium is devoted to providing insights for designers, researchers and practitioners that aspire to enhance the uptake of virtual and augmented reality (VAR), simulation and serious games in education. In the current situation, these insights may help to realize the potential benefits of VAR, simulation and serious games in classrooms across the world.

VAR, simulations and serious games hold great promise for education. They have the potential to be used in student-centered learning environments where students actively engage with learning material leading to more integrated knowledge in comparison with teacher-centered learning environments. This aligns well with policies that advocate a shift from teacher-centered education toward more learner-centered education (e.g., [].

There are several reasons that contribute both to the idea that student-centered inquiry-based learning may not benefit learning and to the uptake of VAR, simulation and serious games. One is that inquiry-based instruction is still sometimes considered as single category, while Hmelo-Silver et al. [] to the conclusion that serious games should not be used because they are believed to be motivating but because of proven learning (or motivational) outcomes.