Systematic Review of Virtualisation in Higher Education, 2018-2025

Ainur Tokhayeva's systematic review analyzes ten quasi-experimental studies from eight countries and six academic fields on the use of virtualisation in higher education from 2018 to April 2025. The 82.3 KB document examines the impact of a three-layer tool chain on learning outcomes, scalability, and operational efficiency. The evidence suggests virtualisation can sustain or improve learning gains in subjects like networking and biology while reducing hardware needs, though methodological limitations are noted.

Use Cases

• Benchmarking learning outcome effect sizes based on reported gains in networking, biology microscopy, and engineering tasks.
• Analyzing resource efficiency based on reported server telemetry showing low CPU and memory usage despite enrollment increases.
• Identifying research gaps for future studies based on noted omissions in cost data and methodological limitations like small sample sizes.

Strengths

• Evidence is drawn from ten quasi-experimental studies across eight countries, providing a multi-context perspective.
• The review reports specific technical performance metrics, such as CPU load staying below 4% and memory use under 2 GB.
• It identifies learning gains with large effect sizes in specific academic fields like networking and biology.

Limitations

• The underlying studies often omitted capital and operating cost data, limiting economic analysis.
• Many included studies relied on modest sample sizes and lacked random assignment or assessor blinding.
• The dataset is a single 82.3 KB document; its scale is limited to the review's text and does not contain the primary study data.

Provenance

Source

Ainur Tokhayeva via figshare.

Collection Method

Systematic review of literature from six scholarly databases.

Time Range

2018 to April 2025.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-21 10:08:50.

Geography

Studies from eight countries, reflecting diverse institutional and socio-economic contexts.