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The development of technology is transforming traditional social routines and habits towards a smart society, which has been defined as a society that makes the most of technological solutions to improve the quality of life, well-being, health and productivity (Levy & Wong, 2014). Along with changes in the society, the way of acquiring education, the learning process and the culture of cognition in general are also changing, where information technologies, various digital and technological solutions have been strengthening their positions convincingly (Dneprovskaya et al., 2015). Therefore, the traditional form of learning as well as classical e-learning form that mainly includes the use of PowerPoint presentations, public WEB sites and online tests (Beetham, Sharpe, 2020) is gradually being replaced by Smart Education that brings emphasises technology-enhanced learning (Daniela, 2020; Dneprovskaya et al., 2015; Zhu et al., 2016).
The concept of Smart Education involves the modernization of the entire educational system, learning process, methods, teaching and learning technologies (Dneprovskaya et al., 2015). The challenge for Smart Pedagogy is to explore how each student responds to the learning strategies, activities and interactions and to find solutions to help learners to acquire knowledge in a transformed pedagogical environment by offering more effective and personalised approach for every learner (adapting to specific needs and taking advantages of individual abilities and talents). One of the key solutions to modernizing education is the transition to technology-enhanced learning (Daniela, 2019; Zhu, 2016).
Technology-enhanced learning encompasses adaptive and flexible technologies that effectively help to achieve the learning goals, ensuring self-directed, student-centred learning process by supporting the abilities of the learners, providing access to personalized content and teaching methods according to personal circumstances and learning needs (Zhu, 2016; Daniela, 2019; Neus & Gallon, 2019). It is believed that technology in education motivates student and helps to construct knowledge with the support of competent educators who conduct predictive analysis of the learning process (Daniela, 2019). Learning from personal experience is seen as essential for knowledge construction, deep understanding of concepts and the development of new competencies, and it is believed that extended reality technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) can support such learning (Daniela & Aierken, 2020).
Despite that the use of technology has great potential to promote and activate students’ interests and learning motivation, there are cases where they can also negatively affect students’ learning achievements, therefore the learning process must be very well-planned (Hadlington, 2017). While using the AR and VR learning experience attention should be paid not only to the instructional design, but also to the features of the VR visualization system that in some cases can cause sensorial and cognitive stress and lead to discomfort, fatigue and anxiety, which are defined as the negative side-effects of VR immersion (Argelaguet Sanz et al., 2018).
This article provides an overview of existing research on VR-related side effects related to the user’s physical well-being. The information obtained is compiled and synthesized to provide a comprehensive basis for understanding the problem, by answering the following questions: