Abstract
Digital technologies are currently employed in almost every aspect of our lives, and have been interwoven in almost every field of specialization. Despite the wide potentials and capabilities of Virtual Reality (VR) technologies in supporting and enhancing education-related activities, many studies indicate that the application of such technologies in the fields of architectural design education is still limited. The objective of this paper is to explore the most important trends and challenges of VR applications in Architectural Design Education for a better understanding the capabilities and limitations of such technologies in supporting educational specialists to explore ways and means to maximize the benefit of using such technologies within different Architectural Design educational environments. The paper adopted the inductive approach analyzing recent literature in this field, supported by case-studies. It is concluded that Architectural Design Education needs to cope with the continuous advancements in VR technologies to comply with the expected future market needs of various modern technologies. The paper Summarizes and compiles the findings in the matrix of "Trends and Challenges of Virtual Reality in Architectural Design Education", which could open the way for future studies through which the priorities and relative importance of such trends and challenges can be determined, as applied in various architectural design educational environments.