Cultural Heritage as a Didactic Resource through Extended Reality: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Extended reality, which encompasses virtual, augmented, and mixed reality, emerges as an important didactic resource, offering great potential to bring heritage closer to the educational environment. Heritage education is a challenge for today's society, contributing to cultural and social development. Therefore, the aim of this systematic review is to analyze documents related to heritage in education through extended reality. The search was conducted using Scopus and Web of Sciences databases, allowing for an international search. We excluded any document that was not a scientific article published in a journal. A total of 52 documents were analyzed, all of which were open-access articles. Preliminary results indicate that virtual reality and augmented reality are utilized in education to work with architectural, historical, archaeological, and musical heritage. Extended reality has been applied in all the stages of the education system, and in formal and non-formal settings, thereby demonstrating its versatility. These experiences increase motivation and academic performance in comparison to less innovative methodologies, which is in line with other studies on this topic. In conclusion, extended reality has the potential to make a significant impact on education, particularly when combined with heritage. The creation of multidisciplinary groups will enhance research in the near future.