What is the role of reality in laboratory education?

A survey of the literature on virtual laboratories shows that there is a dearth of understanding about learning in the virtual world in relation to practical chemistry, and even less so with respect to immersive 3-D technologies. The work reported to date is largely light on theory, and means that beyond observations of (virtual) classroom activity, we are lacking significant explanatory power to explore the learning in the virtual practical world. This commentary aims to bring together the literature on virtual laboratories and what we know about learning in the laboratory to achieve three general headline goals:•To consider suitable theoretical perspectives to explore learning in the context of a complex learning environment such as laboratory setting by unpacking the importance of interactions, and relating that to the theory of distributed cognition;•To build on the role of laboratory work as one where students learn how to do chemistry and position with affective aspects we know from research on meaningful learning in the laboratory;•To augment the work on complementary work to physical laboratory activity and position the potential of the virtual world as a creative supplement to the laboratory.