Abstract:

Digitalisation opens far-reaching possibilities for teachers and learners to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of education. In this context, virtual training is becoming increasingly relevant, and its design can be constantly optimised through technical progress such as the integration of haptic elements in virtual training scenarios. This type of technology is gaining importance due to its promising perspectives. Additional haptic elements in virtual space can, in the appropriate use case, enhance the learning experience and thus digitally simplify complex forms of competence acquisition. This applies to different industries, whereby the usefulness of integrating a sense of touch in training varies between use cases.

A growing number of scientific publications and systematic reviews on this topic have been published during the past five years. Summarised results are of decisive relevance to derivate targeted action recommendations for scholarship and practice, as well as for identifying meaningful use cases to enhance the learning experience. Therefore, this paper aims to provide a high-level overview of the topic, as well as identify existing research gaps and generate strategic recommendations for scholarship and practice. For this purpose, an umbrella review on the topic of "Haptic technology on upskilling and training scenarios” was conducted including review papers published between 2017 and the first half of 2022. The results were compared and analysed minding key outcomes, study sector, type of data sources included, framework used, challenges and limitations.

Keywords:

Digital Learning, Haptic Learning, Haptic Technologies, Virtual Training.