Since half of the century, technology has dominated the modern era. The rapid advancement of technology has reached generating artificial intelligence and artificial realities. So, virtual reality is an emerging technology and is applicable in education as well. Virtual reality is a computer-generated simulation, where people can interact within an artificial environment. Moreover, in an educational setting, such an environment provides students with a chance to get experiential learning. This paper has a systematic literature review on emerging technologies, such as virtual reality as a pedagogical tool for enhancing students’ experiential learning. This review aims to explore and understand the effect of virtual reality on students’ experiential learning by reviewing twenty-six selected articles. The selected studies have followed various methodologies and are from different contexts. This review study aims to present a systematic literature review for understanding and exploring the effect of virtual reality as a pedagogical tool for enhancing students’ experiential learning. Nine themes were identified, which are (a) virtual reality as pedagogical tool, (b) virtual reality as emerging educational technology tool, (c) virtual reality as digital transformation, (d) virtual reality as teaching-learning model, (e) virtual reality as architectural pedagogy, (f) virtual reality for communication skills, (g) virtual reality for reading and writing skills, (h) virtual reality for social learning, and (i) virtual reality for experiential learning. Thus, it is found that virtual reality is used as a pedagogical tool for various subject areas for encouraging involvement. It is helpful in medical, engineering, language, and social learning, as it provides a chance to get first-hand experience of the environment. Also, it helps learners to engage in a presented virtual environment and experience the sense of presence in it and enhances students’ experiential learning. Therefore, this review found virtual reality as an essential pedagogical tool for strengthening students’ experiential learning.

Purpose: The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has become a major driving force in transforming education worldwide. Similarly, in the last ten years, the usage of ICTs and e-learning in Pakistan has increased. Whereas the latest educational policy of the Government of Pakistan has focused on using ICTs and e-learning in schools and universities. The national professional standards for teachers have also suggested teachers to integrate ICTs in their classrooms and develop e-learning platforms for teaching and learning processes. However, in this study the effectiveness of information and communication and e-learning technologies integration in teaching and learning has been assessed. The context selected for this research study is a public university of Sindh, Pakistan. The research gap, which has been founded through the extensive literature review, indicated that most of the students are not able to utilize ICTs effectively. The first objective of this study is to enable students to gain wider range of knowledge and access Internet for developing a global outlook. Moreover, the second objective of this study is to develop students' capabilities of processing information more effectively and efficiently for teaching and learning.Design/methodology/approach: By nature, this study is quantitative survey-based research study. For this purpose, data has been collected from students and teachers of English, Computer Science and Business Administration departments of targeted university, survey questionnaires have been adopted as a data collection tool. Whereas the random sampling technique is used for the collection of data by using Morgan table of sample size. Additionally, data has been collected from 100 participants, 80 of them were students and 20 were teachers, and data has been analyzed by using SPSS 22.0 software.Findings: The findings of this study have indicated the student's level of interest toward the integration of ICTs and e-learning in science and social science courses. Similarly, the findings specify that through ICT and e-learning materials, students can learn more effectively, which can also facilitate teachers for their teaching process in this modern era of technology. Whereas the issue that has been specified through the findings is that the teachers are not encouraged by the management of the university to implement the ICT in their teaching and learning due to their concerns on the limited resources and lack of competencies.Practical implications: For the practical implication, the findings of this study will facilitate the teachers and learners for integrating the ICTs and e-learning in their course curriculums and interactive teaching practices as per modern era of technology. Also, this study will help the provincial leader and policymakers by addressing the teachers’ concern to encourage the integration of ICT tools and develop capabilities for interactive classrooms for effective teaching and learning.Originality/value: This is the first study of its nature that has been conducted in the Pakistani public university in rural setting, and the finding of this study will facilitate and help the institutional and government stakeholders to where and how they can effectively integrate ICTs and e-learning in classrooms for interactive teaching and learning processes in the rural Sindh.

Purpose: The rapid advancement of technology in online communication and fingertip access to the Internet has resulted in the expedited dissemination of fake news to engage a global audience at a low cost by news channels, freelance reporters and websites. Amid the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, individuals are inflicted with these false and potentially harmful claims and stories, which may harm the vaccination process. Psychological studies reveal that the human ability to detect deception is only slightly better than chance; therefore, there is a growing need for serious consideration for developing automated strategies to combat fake news that traverses these platforms at an alarming rate. This paper systematically reviews the existing fake news detection technologies by exploring various machine learning and deep learning techniques pre- and post-pandemic, which has never been done before to the best of the authors’ knowledge.Design/methodology/approach: The detailed literature review on fake news detection is divided into three major parts. The authors searched papers no later than 2017 on fake news detection approaches on deep learning and machine learning. The papers were initially searched through the Google scholar platform, and they have been scrutinized for quality. The authors kept “Scopus” and “Web of Science” as quality indexing parameters. All research gaps and available databases, data pre-processing, feature extraction techniques and evaluation methods for current fake news detection technologies have been explored, illustrating them using tables, charts and trees.Findings: The paper is dissected into two approaches, namely machine learning and deep learning, to present a better understanding and a clear objective. Next, the authors present a viewpoint on which approach is better and future research trends, issues and challenges for researchers, given the relevance and urgency of a detailed and thorough analysis of existing models. This paper also delves into fake new detection during COVID-19, and it can be inferred that research and modeling are shifting toward the use of ensemble approaches.Originality/value: The study also identifies several novel automated web-based approaches used by researchers to assess the validity of pandemic news that have proven to be successful, although currently reported accuracy has not yet reached consistent levels in the real world.