A Systematic Literature Review on Virtual Laboratory for Learning

In education, classroom and laboratory activities must work in integration to achieve cognitive, affective, and psychomotor aspects in learning outcomes. Laboratory experience is essential for students to apply their theories and concepts into real-world situations. However, there are times when obstacles arise and the desired learning outcomes cannot be achieved in a physical laboratory. Due to various reasons, sometimes the access to the laboratory can be stunted, therefore it will be hard for students to prove the theory and concept they learn in class. To overcome that problem, new innovations are needed to support laboratory activities when there are problems and access limitations in physical laboratories. Virtual laboratories can be proposed as one of the alternatives solutions. Using the internet virtual laboratories are basically accessible anywhere and anytime. Therefore virtual laboratories can be used as either main resources or support systems for student’s laboratory activities. In order to determine purposes, technologies, and benefits of virtual laboratories, the authors will conduct a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) on virtual laboratory papers ranging from 2016 to 2021. There are 37 articles from ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, Science Direct, Scopus, and SpringerLink to be discuss further. This paper summarizes six purposes, five types of technologies, and seven benefits of the virtual laboratories. Based on the results, the use of virtual laboratories has increased students’ motivation and participation in learning, as well as improved student learning outcomes.