SPECIAL SECTION

Graduate Visions of Extended Reality: A Thematic Analysis of 2024 Scholarship

Feng Yi Chew

Introduction

The field of extended reality (XR) – encompassing virtual, augmented, and mixed reality – continues to evolve rapidly across technological, pedagogical, clinical, artistic, and industrial contexts. In parallel with advances in hardware, software, and immersive interface design, academic research has expanded its efforts to understand, evaluate, and envision the role of XR in shaping human experience, interaction, and knowledge creation.

Doctoral dissertations offer a unique window into this evolving landscape, revealing the ways emerging scholars position XR within broader theoretical frameworks, disciplinary agendas, and sociotechnical imaginaries. This section presents a thematic synthesis of graduate visions for XR, capturing how the next generation of researchers are conceptualizing its potential and addressing its challenges. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time such an analysis has been done.

Methodology

The analysis is based on a sample of 171 doctoral dissertations published in 2024 that focus on XR technologies. The sample was constructed through a systematic search of the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global database using the keywords “extended reality,” “augmented reality,” and “virtual reality,” with filters applied for:

• Manuscript type: Doctoral dissertations
• Language: English
• Publication dates: January 1, 2024 – December 31, 2024

Each dissertation was coded and analyzed across three dimensions:

• Disciplinary Theme: The field or domain in which the work was situated (e.g., Education, Medicine, Computer Science).
• Theoretical Framework: The conceptual lens guiding the research (e.g., Presence Theory, Cognitive Load Theory).
• XR Core Themes: The major topical concerns driving the research (e.g., Immersion and Presence, User Experience).

While some dissertations spanned cross-cutting domains, each was categorized according to the theme deemed most appropriate based on its primary focus. This tripartite coding scheme allows us to trace not only where XR research is happening, but how it is being framed and for what purposes.

Distribution by Disciplinary Theme

To better understand the contours of scholarly attention within the field of XR, each of the 171 dissertations was classified into one of six disciplinary themes. These categories were developed inductively through an iterative review of dissertation abstracts, allowing us to capture the most prominent domains of XR research while maintaining clarity and comparability across studies. They reflect the primary domain of research as expressed through the dissertation’s central questions, methodology, and institutional affiliation.

While some dissertations spanned multiple domains or adopted interdisciplinary approaches, each dissertation was assigned to a single theme based on our best judgment of its predominant focus. This classification offers a high-level view of where XR scholarship is emerging and how disciplinary norms shape its application and exploration.

The categories are as follows:

• Education: Research focused on XR as a teaching or learning tool in K–12, higher education, vocational training, or professional development contexts.
• Computer Science / Engineering / Artificial Intelligence (AI): Work grounded in the development of XR technologies, including software engineering, algorithm design, computer vision, and AI-driven interfaces.
• Medicine / Healthcare: Dissertations investigating XR in clinical training, therapeutic interventions, patient care, or health behavior change.
• Design Considerations / User Experience: Research focused on interaction design, usability, accessibility, and affective response in XR environments.
• Application / Industry: Practice-oriented dissertations applying XR to sectors like construction, military, retail, tourism, or workforce development.
• Music / Fine Arts / Culture: Creative and interpretive uses of XR for artistic expression, cultural heritage, or digital humanities.

While some dissertations spanned multiple domains or adopted interdisciplinary approaches, each dissertation was assigned to a single theme based on our best judgment of its predominant focus. This classification offers a high-level view of where XR scholarship is emerging and how disciplinary norms shape its application and exploration.

The three dominant disciplinary clusters – Education, Medicine / Healthcare, and Computer Science / Engineering / AI – together accounted for over 70% of XR-related dissertations in 2024. This distribution reflects the field’s emphasis on pedagogical innovation, clinical utility, and technical development. Music / Fine Arts / Culture remains a niche area (4.7%), while Design Considerations / User Experience and Application / Industry are underrepresented despite their real-world relevance.

In contrast, the disciplinary focus of peer-reviewed XR journal publications in 2024 was dominated by Computer Science (23.4%), Engineering (16.5%), and Medicine (12.6%). Notably, Education did not appear as a distinct category among journal publications. While this may be due to methodological differences in how the peer-reviewed articles were indexed by the Scopus software, it could also serve to underscore how dissertations may spotlight pedagogical innovation and applied contexts differently from mainstream XR publishing.

The prominence of Education and Medicine / Healthcare aligns with longstanding research and funding priorities, as XR continues to be explored for its instructional and clinical potential. The strong showing in technical disciplines reflects XR’s maturation as a field within human-computer interaction and AI. Meanwhile, the relative scarcity of dissertations in arts, user experience, and industry suggests emerging frontiers; domains that may gain prominence as XR expands beyond experimental labs into everyday contexts and demands for human-centered, ethically informed design increase.

Distribution by Theoretical Framework

To illuminate the conceptual foundations guiding XR-related doctoral research in 2024, each dissertation was coded based on its use of one or more of five commonly used frameworks in the XR literature. These frameworks were chosen based on their frequent appearance in immersive media research and their relevance to user experience, design, and adoption:

• Affordance Theory: Concerned with how users perceive and act upon the functional possibilities of XR interfaces or environments (Gibson, 1979).
• Technology Acceptance Model (TAM): Investigates factors such as perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness that drive technology adoption (Davis, 1986).
• Cognitive Load Theory: Focuses on the mental effort required to process information in immersive or multimedia contexts (Sweller, 2011).
• Presence Theory: Addresses how users psychologically experience immersion, realism, and “being there” in XR environments (Lee, 2004).
• Social Presence Theory: Explores the sense of others’ presence and interaction in virtual environments, particularly in educational and collaborative XR (Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976).

Note: Many dissertations employed multiple frameworks or operated without a clearly stated theoretical base.

The most frequently used frameworks were Affordance Theory (21.6%) and the Technology Acceptance Model (19.3%), reflecting a strong practical focus on user interaction and adoption. Cognitive Load Theory (16.4%) appeared often in education and healthcare dissertations, where managing mental effort is critical. Presence Theory, despite its historical importance, was cited in only 14.6% of dissertations, suggesting a shift from immersive experience to applied concerns. Social Presence Theory was least represented (5.8%), mainly in work involving collaborative or communicative XR.

This distribution underscores a broader turn toward applied research, emphasizing usability, learning, and adoption over foundational questions of immersion. However, the limited use of Social Presence Theory and the sizable number of dissertations without explicit theoretical grounding (22.2%) reveal opportunities for stronger conceptual integration, especially as XR increasingly facilitates remote interaction and social presence.

Distribution by XR Core Themes

To capture the recurring priorities and conceptual focal points of XR-related doctoral research in 2024, five core themes were identified that appeared consistently across the dissertations. These themes were selected through iterative review of dissertation abstracts, keywords, and coding memos, based on their centrality in XR scholarship and relevance to both technical development and user-centered evaluation. Because many dissertations touched on multiple concerns, each was allowed to reflect more than one core theme.

The resulting categories reflect common design concerns, theoretical questions, and sociotechnical considerations that shape how XR is conceptualized and deployed in academic contexts:

• User Experience: Encompasses research that prioritizes usability, accessibility, satisfaction, and affective engagement in XR environments. This theme captures efforts to make XR systems more intuitive, inclusive, and enjoyable.
• Technological Advancements: Reflects work that contributes to new methods, systems, or tools in XR – including hardware development, tracking systems, novel algorithms, or software frameworks.
• Immersion and Presence: Includes studies focused on the psychological sense of “being there” in a virtual environment, often tied to sensory realism, embodiment, and perceptual fidelity.
• Interaction Design: Covers how users engage with and manipulate XR environments through gestures, controllers, gaze, voice, and other input modalities. This theme includes interface design and feedback mechanisms.
• Ethical Implications: Represents inquiries into the societal, moral, and accessibility dimensions of XR – including algorithmic bias, data privacy, authorship, and the potential for exclusion or harm.

User Experience was the most prominent theme, appearing in over half of all dissertations – a sign of growing emphasis on human-centered design, emotional engagement, and accessibility as XR moves toward mainstream use. Technological Advancements (47.4%) and Immersion and Presence (45.6%) were also widely represented, reflecting continued efforts to enhance XR’s technical and sensory capacities. Interaction Design (43.3%) often overlapped with user experience, highlighting sustained interest in how users navigate and control XR environments. Ethical Implications, while addressed in only 25.1% of dissertations, emerged in work concerned with bias, surveillance, and the exclusion of marginalized groups.

This distribution reflects two dominant axes in XR research: one focused on technical performance and immersion, the other on user needs and societal impact. While user-centered design leads the discourse, the relatively limited attention to ethics underscores the need for more integrated approaches to equity, justice, and responsibility in XR development, especially as these technologies expand into high-stakes settings like education and healthcare.

Geographies of Knowledge Production

The 171 XR-related dissertations published in 2024 reflect a predominantly U.S.-centered landscape of scholarly activity. Approximately 90% of these dissertations originated from institutions within the United States, with especially high concentrations in states such as New York (17 dissertations), California (16), Florida (9), Illinois (8), North Carolina (8), Massachusetts (7), Texas (6), Maryland (6), Pennsylvania (6), and Arizona (6). These states are home to major research universities with established programs in education, engineering, media studies, and health sciences – fields that frequently intersect with XR research.

This distribution suggests that XR scholarship in the U.S. is concentrated in urban academic hubs along the coasts and in select interior states, reflecting broader trends in research funding, institutional capacity, and regional specialization.

Outside the U.S., international contributions were modest but geographically diverse, with dissertations emerging from institutions in Canada (Quebec and Ontario), Germany, England, Turkey, Qatar, and Hong Kong. Notably, Canada produced the most international dissertations (5 total), indicating growing XR research capacity within North American institutions beyond the U.S. It is worth noting that the search parameters were limited to English-language dissertations, which likely underrepresents XR scholarship from non-English-speaking regions and institutions. This methodological constraint may partially account for the dominance of research output from English-speaking countries, particularly the United States, Canada, and the UK^[1].

The geography of XR knowledge production reveals a familiar pattern: research output is highly concentrated in countries with well-funded research ecosystems, particularly the United States. While this centralization facilitates innovation through institutional infrastructure and interdisciplinary collaboration, it also risks reinforcing geographic inequalities in who gets to define the terms, ethics, and applications of immersive technologies. As XR increasingly becomes a global medium, there is a pressing need to support more inclusive, transnational scholarship that reflects a broader range of cultural contexts, user needs, and design priorities.

Research Methodologies

XR-related dissertations in 2024 employed a range of methodological approaches, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of the field and the multifaceted nature of immersive technologies. Researchers selected methods aligned with their disciplinary norms and the specific research questions they pursued, often blending traditional social science techniques with design-based and user-centered evaluations.

• Quantitative Methods: Many studies utilized quantitative approaches such as surveys, experiments, and psychometric instruments to collect numerical data. These methods were commonly applied to assess variables like user experience, learning outcomes, and technology acceptance. Statistical analyses, including regression, ANOVA, and structural equation modeling, were frequently used to test hypotheses and model relationships.
• Qualitative Methods: Qualitative approaches, including interviews, focus groups, ethnographies, and case studies, were employed to capture rich, contextual insights into user perceptions, motivations, and lived experiences. These methods were particularly prominent in dissertations exploring cultural narratives, ethical implications, and design practices in XR.
• Mixed Methods: A notable subset of dissertations adopted mixed methods designs, integrating qualitative and quantitative techniques. This approach allowed researchers to triangulate findings, validate results across data sources, and develop more nuanced understandings of XR phenomena.
• User Studies and Interaction Analysis: User studies were a hallmark of XR research, often involving usability testing, task-based evaluations, and observation of real-time interactions within immersive environments. These studies provided direct feedback on design functionality, interface effectiveness, and user behavior patterns.
• Data Analysis Techniques: The choice of data analysis methods varied by study. Quantitative studies typically employed inferential statistics, while qualitative studies used thematic, content, or discourse analysis. Comparative analysis was also common, especially in studies evaluating different XR tools, user groups, or application contexts.

The methodological diversity in XR dissertations demonstrates a growing maturity in the field, where empirical rigor is paired with exploratory openness. As XR technologies continue to evolve, methodological pluralism will remain essential for capturing both the measurable impacts and the subjective dimensions of immersive experiences.

Temporal Trends in XR Dissertation Output

XR-related dissertation production in 2024 appears to reflect a continuation and possible acceleration of broader trends in immersive technology research. While this synthesis focuses on a single publication year, internal document metadata and dissertation abstracts often referenced research activity beginning as early as 2020, suggesting that many of these projects were shaped by the rapid expansion of XR during the COVID-19 pandemic. This period saw a surge in remote learning tools, virtual simulations in healthcare, and increased investment in digital infrastructure, all of which provided fertile ground for XR experimentation.

Though data from a single year cannot confirm a sustained trend, the volume and disciplinary diversity of 2024’s dissertations indicate that XR research is maturing. The steady integration of XR across sectors, especially education, medicine, and design, suggests a normalization of immersive technologies as viable research and application domains. Future reviews that compare dissertation output across multiple years will be essential to determine whether 2024 marks a high point or a new baseline for XR scholarship.

Outlook and Future Directions

The landscape of XR-related dissertations in 2024 reflects a rapidly evolving field that is simultaneously maturing and expanding. The current body of research highlights strong foundations in user-centered design, technological development, and applied use cases in education, healthcare, and industry. Yet, it also signals emerging opportunities (and obligations) for scholars to critically examine the broader social, ethical, and cultural dimensions of XR. While many dissertations reflected established trajectories in education, medicine, and engineering, several pushed the boundaries of XR scholarship by integrating interdisciplinary perspectives – such as neuroaesthetics, cultural heritage, and social justice – signaling a gradual shift toward more critical, affective, and context-aware applications of immersive technology.

As XR scholarship moves forward, several key directions are poised to shape its next phase of development:

• Toward Ethical and Inclusive XR: While ethical concerns were addressed in some dissertations, this theme remains underrepresented relative to technical and experiential topics. Future scholarship must engage more deeply with issues of bias, accessibility, surveillance, data privacy, and the equitable distribution of XR resources – especially as these technologies scale into everyday environments.
• Globalization of XR Research: The geographic concentration of XR dissertations in the United States reveals an uneven distribution of research capacity. Expanding global participation will require structural support for researchers in underrepresented regions, as well as a shift toward cross-cultural methodologies that reflect diverse user needs and sociotechnical contexts.
• Integration with AI and Data Science: The convergence of XR with artificial intelligence, machine learning, and real-time analytics offers fertile ground for future inquiry. Dissertations may increasingly explore adaptive XR systems, personalized learning environments, and predictive models of user behavior that respond dynamically to context.
• Longitudinal and Real-World Studies: Much of the existing research focuses on short-term or lab-based interventions. Future work will benefit from longitudinal designs and real-world deployments that examine sustained engagement, behavioral outcomes, and organizational integration over time.
• Expanding Disciplinary Horizons: Although most XR dissertations are rooted in education, engineering, and healthcare, future work is likely to proliferate across the arts, humanities, environmental studies, and public policy. These expansions will bring new theoretical frameworks and critical lenses to bear on XR development and implementation.

Across the reviewed dissertations, XR technologies were predominantly treated as established tools rather than experimental variables. In most cases, methodologies were designed to evaluate how XR could enhance performance, learning, engagement, or usability within specific contexts – such as classrooms, medical simulations, or collaborative environments. This optimization-oriented framing reflects a broader trend in the field: the utility of XR was often assumed rather than interrogated. Fewer studies critically assessed whether XR was the most appropriate medium for a given problem, or explored its limitations, sociocultural implications, or accessibility challenges. As a result, methodological approaches tended to focus on measuring user outcomes within XR-enhanced conditions rather than questioning the role of XR itself. This orientation underscores the need for future research to more fully consider XR’s suitability, ethical trade-offs, and contextual fit across diverse settings.

Looking ahead, XR scholarship stands at a pivotal moment. As immersive technologies become more embedded in social life, the research community has an opportunity – and responsibility – to shape their trajectory with rigor, creativity, and care. Future dissertations will not only refine XR tools but also interrogate their implications, ensuring that innovation proceeds with reflexivity, inclusivity, and public value.

Conclusion

This synthesis of 171 XR-related doctoral dissertations from 2024 offers a unique lens into how the field is evolving across disciplines, theories, and global contexts. While peer-reviewed articles and industry white papers often capture high-profile innovations, dissertations reflect a broader spectrum of inquiry, frequently addressing underexplored topics, emerging applications, and context-specific challenges.

By analyzing dissertations, we gain insight into how early-career researchers are shaping the future of XR – not only through technical development but also through pedagogical, ethical, and cultural frameworks. These works offer clues about where institutional investments are going, what theoretical paradigms are being taught and applied, and how XR is being imagined in domains as varied as medicine, education, the arts, and human-computer interaction.

The diversity of methods and disciplinary entry points reveals XR’s inherently interdisciplinary nature. Yet, persistent gaps – such as the underrepresentation of ethical frameworks or global perspectives – remind us that the development of immersive technologies is not just a technical endeavor, but a sociotechnical one.

Dissertations, in this sense, are not just academic exercises; they are signals of where XR may be headed, and where critical interventions are still needed. As the field matures, continued attention to graduate-level research will remain vital for cultivating inclusive, impactful, and forward-looking extended reality systems.

References

Davis, F. D. (1986). A technology acceptance model for empirically testing new end-user information systems: Theory and results (Doctoral dissertation). Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception: Classic edition. Houghton Mifflin.
Lee, K. M. (2004). Presence, explicated. Communication Theory, 14(1), 27–50. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2004.tb00302.x
Short, J., Williams, E., & Christie, B. (1976). The social psychology of telecommunications. John Wiley & Sons.
Sweller, J. (2011). Cognitive load theory. In J. P. Mestre & B. H. Ross (Eds.), The psychology of learning and motivation: Cognition in education (pp. 37–76). Elsevier Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-387691-1.00002-8

1. The search strategy focused exclusively on English-language keywords such as “extended reality,” “virtual reality,” and “augmented reality.” While these terms are widely used in international scholarship, they may not capture the full range of XR-related research conducted in non-English-speaking contexts. For instance, dissertations written in other languages may rely on region-specific terminology (e.g., “informatique graphique” in French, “computación inmersiva” in Spanish, or domain-specific labels like “human-computer interaction” or “3D visualization”) that do not directly translate to or index under “XR.” Consequently, our dataset may underrepresent international work that uses alternate conceptual framings or disciplinary vocabularies. ↑