Despite growing interest in multiuser virtual reality (VR) for education, evidence-based guidelines for designing effective collaborative VR learning experiences remain limited. This scoping review analyzed 23 empirical studies of collaborative learning in head-mounted display VR environments, exploring how contextual factors and technological affordances — including collaboration modality and system symmetry — shape activity design. We identified six distinct patterns of activities and analyzed the application of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) scripts to support collaboration. Findings highlight predominant use of play-level (48%) and scene-level (48%) CSCL scripts, with minimal scriptlet-level implementation. Analysis of relationships between design dimensions, activity patterns, and collaboration supports reveals three fundamental design tensions: structured scaffolding versus flexible social interaction, role asymmetry versus technological symmetry, and shared physical presence versus distributed collaboration. This work contributes empirical foundations for collaborative VR learning design, while identifying gaps, design implications, and opportunities for advancing both HCI research and educational practice in immersive environments.

Figure 1: Traditional Performing arts theatre experience versus screen-based video watching experience versus Spatial Interaction-based Segmented-Audio (SISA) prototype experience.(Left) Traditional performance, though sensory engaging and immersive, requires physical attendance at theatre venues, extended passive listening, and relies on conventional practitioner enactment, highlighting fundamental constraints in ICH engagement and preservation.(Middle) Screen-based videos provides temporal flexibility but still lacks immersive engagement essential for authentic cultural appreciation.(Right) Our SISA prototype enables active audience participation through spatial interactions with segmented audio elements in an immersive environment.

Many instructors in computing and HCI disciplines use hands-on activities for teaching and training new skills. Beyond simply teaching hands-on skills like sketching and programming, instructors also use these activities so students can acquire tacit skills. Yet, current video-conferencing technologies may not effectively support hands-on activities in online teaching contexts. To develop an understanding of the inadequacies of current video-conferencing technologies for hands-on activities, we conducted 15 interviews with university-level instructors who had quickly pivoted their use of hands-on activities to an online context during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on our analysis, we uncovered four pedagogical goals that instructors have when using hands-on activities online and how instructors were unable to adequately address them due to the technological limitations of current video-conferencing tools. Our work provides empirical data about the challenges that many instructors experienced, and in so doing, the pedagogical goals we identify provide new requirements for video-conferencing systems to better support hands-on activities.

Advances in mobile and wireless technologies provide new possibilities for supporting K-12 learning activities that can be spatially distributed in the classroom, for example in jointly investigating a scientific phenomenon. Such technologies have an impact on the ways in which students engage with one another, and with the quality of their engagement with the activity itself. This paper uses an embodied approach to understand the patterns of interactions between students (e.g., student-to-student, student-to-teacher) and with computational media within the environment (e.g., student-to-device, student-to-large display), in relation to students' real-time meaning making as they engage in collective inquiry in an immersive simulation environment. The design-based research study consists of two iterations tested in an authentic school setting. We found that increased student-to-student interactions was accompanied by improved observational accuracy and higher quality student explanations constructed. The design implications of the research findings are discussed.

Digitally augmented physical spaces (e.g., smart classrooms) offer opportunities to engage students in novel and potentially transformative learning experiences. This paper presents an immersive rainforest simulation and collective inquiry activity where students collect observational data from the environment and explore their peers' data through large visualization displays and personal mobile devices. Two iterations of the design were tested, which resulted in higher quality student explanations constructed. Images were found to be an important source of evidence for the explanations, more so than text-only evidence. We also found that patterns of collective ideas influenced student performance, and that visualizations, as ambient or plenary displays, supported both teacher and students in reviewing patterns of collected data.

This paper presents our research of a pedagogical model known as Knowledge Community and Inquiry (KCI), focusing on our design of a technological infrastructure for the orchestration of the complex CSCL scripts that characterize KCI curricula. We first introduce the KCI model including some basic design principles, and describe its dependency on real time learning analytics. Next, we describe our technology, known as SAIL Smart Space (S3), which provides scaffolding and analytic support of sequenced interactions amongst people, materials, tools and environments. We outline the critical role of the teacher in our designs and describe how S3 supports their active role in orchestration. Finally we outline two implementations of KCI/S3 and the role of learning analytics, in supporting dynamic collective visualizations, real time orchestrational logic, and ambient displays.