Framework of virtual platforms for learning and developing competencies

Abstract This work seeks to analyze the scientific evidence of the last five years and investigate the behavioral trends of virtual platforms and simulations for learning and skills development. By conducting a systematic literature review, utilizing the SciVal tool, and assessing statistical findings, we aim to establish a framework for the current status of the subject and identify the primary trends and applications of the strategies employed. Among the most relevant findings were the increase in registered users worldwide in 2021 due to the pandemic and the growth of courses available on virtual platforms such as Coursera and edEx. The most significant themes, both in indexed scholarly publications and in recent citations, were in computer science and education, showing how applications of educational technology have broken the paradigm of traditional education. Statistical studies also provide information regarding projections for new users in the next five years, owing to the popularity and effectiveness of these tools. This article summarizes the most significant information from sources such as Scopus, Web of Science, SciVal, and Statistical Sources. It presents a clear overview of the experimentation and use of virtual platforms and simulations for learning and competency development in higher education, highlighting key concepts and providing guidelines for future applications.


PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT
This study aims to explore and analyze the scientific evidence from the past five years and the current trends in virtual platforms for learning and skills development.The objective is to provide an overview of the subject status, identify emerging trends, and examine the applications of these strategies.The research found (a) significant increase in global registered users in 2021, driven by the impact of the pandemic, along with a surge in online courses offered by different platforms, (b) noticeable popularity and effectiveness of these tools, and (c) influential topics in the fields of computer science and education, indicating a shift towards educational technology and a departure from traditional teaching methods.This article synthesizes valuable information from different sources, offering a comprehensive view of the experimentation and use of virtual platforms for learning in higher education, and providing key concepts and guidelines for future applications in this rapidly evolving field.

Introduction
The increasing rapid advancement in communication technologies has forced educational institutions to seek, use, or create the most attractive and promising tools to serve the various methods and strategies employed in the classroom.At a time of solid technological presence, the educational field must promote didactic processes in which technologies become the best allies to face a world in constant change (Riofrío-Calderón & Ramírez-Montoya, 2022).Introducing new technology-assisted learning tools, such as mobile devices, smart whiteboards, MOOCs, tablets, laptops, simulations, dynamic visualizations, and virtual labs, has changed education in schools and institutions (Haleem et al., 2022).Educators continuously seek technological tools to improve their students' learning (Carstens et al., 2021).Since the 2020 pandemic crisis, this intention has increased exponentially as progress towards virtuality accelerated to meet the need for stay-at-home education so as not to spread the virus.A traditional classroom environment relies on verbal and nonverbal communication to create and foster cultural norms, behaviors, practices, and beliefs, but virtual learning disrupts this process as technology changes the individual's communicative behaviors (Greenan, 2021).College students value digital tools for learning and perceive technology as a practical support for their learning (Dabbagh et al., 2019).The teachers had to prepare in the short term to migrate their classes from face-to-face to virtual classrooms, and, despite the effort and much achievement, some essential activities could not occur.For example, carrying out these practices from distance classes was impossible in chemistry, engineering, medicine, biology, and physics laboratories.
In recent years, virtual learning environments have been a topic of great interest in the scientific, educational, and technological communities.They offer enormous potential for developing students' skills and improving learning outcomes.However, leveraging virtual learning environments requires teachers to face new challenges.It requires changing teaching methods, implementing effective virtual teaching modes, and adopting a learner-centered approach (Tan et al., 2021).Simulations have become an increasingly popular teaching and learning tool in higher education, as business simulations focus on specific functional areas specific to a company, such as accounting, finance, marketing, and business ethics.
In contrast, others take an enterprise-wide approach emphasizing relationships among an organization's various functional areas (Lohmann et al., 2019).The value of virtual reality in education and learning is partly related to the fact that this technology can enhance and facilitate learning, increase memory capacity, and help students make better decisions while working under entertaining and stimulating conditions (Elmqaddem, 2019).The emergence of Industry 4.0 highlights the need for people to have the necessary skills to assume new functions, so educational processes must embrace these new paradigms (Pacheco-Velazquez, 2022).The need to provide students with tools to practice cases that may arise in their professional work after graduation is evident.Simulation platforms and virtual laboratories offer a direct approach to a potential scenario, facilitating the development of professional and transversal skills, such as selfmanagement of learning, teamwork, reasoning-for-complexity, and organization.This work primarily aims to offer a comprehensive overview of virtual learning environments in recent years.The objective is to provide a contextualized understanding of the subject, substantiate its relevance, and establish a solid foundation for analysis, interpretation, and advancement in this field.Exploring this environment's current status, this study sheds light on the latest trends, developments, and challenges, thereby contributing to a deeper awareness of this significant area of research.Ultimately, this examination can facilitate informed decision-making and drive the progress of virtual learning environments.

Method
The methodology to conduct this study and arrive at a precise and complete contextual framework comprised three strategies: (1) Systematic literature review (SLR) (2) Research Performance Information (SciVal) (3) Statistical data The following describes the three methods used for the research evidence presented in this study.

Systematic literature review
The researchers conducted a systematic literature review to identify the different terms, topics, and trends in theoretical and practical studies related to developing competencies and learning through virtual platforms.The three stages of a systematic review are planning, reviewing, and reporting (Kitchenham, 2007).Figure 1 shows the phases determined for this SLR and the actions carried out in each.
In phase 1, this review's objective was to identify the main components, variables, themes, and trends in virtual learning platforms for developing competencies in university students.
The following research questions were defined: RQ1: What are the most cited articles?RQ2: What are the issues and trends addressed?RQ3: What is the keyword that best describes the study?RQ4: For which area of application was the study conducted?
To choose the articles that comprise the database, we established four inclusion criteria: scientific articles written in English or Spanish, articles contained in the Scopus and Web of Science databases, articles published from 2017 to January 2023, and articles related to virtual platforms for learning and developing competencies in higher education.
The second phase entailed extracting articles from Web of Science and Scopus databases.The search established the main terms: simulation, virtuality, competencies, and higher education.The search was refined by limiting categories or subject areas by languages, either English or Spanish.In addition, previously established inclusion criteria were applied.The implemented search strings were as follows:   LIMIT-TO (PUBYEAR, 2019)) AND (LIMIT-TO (LANGUAGE, "English") OR LIMIT-TO (LANGUAGE, "Spanish")) AND (LIMIT-TO (SRCTYPE, "j") OR LIMIT-TO (SRCTYPE, "p"))

Interpretation
After extracting the results from the search strings, we exported the articles to Excel for database cleanup.As shown in Figure 2, the articles found in both databases were first detected to eliminate duplicates.Then, the articles were analyzed, arriving at 33 articles eligible for review.Excluded were articles that did not directly relate to the topic of interest, mainly because they only mentioned one of the keywords but did not research the impact or application of virtual environments for learning.
In the third phase of the review, we analyzed and described the selected articles, answering each of the proposed research questions and sharing the conclusions about the most relevant findings.The database used for this study is available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7683181.

SciVal
To review the research performance of the topic of interest of this study, we used Elsevier's SciVal tool.SciVal allows you to review the research performance evaluation with different types of analysis.It extracts data from the Scopus database, encompassing more than 78 million records of scientific papers published since 1996 from more than 24,000 journals and more than 5,000 publishers worldwide.
Similar to the systematic literature review, alluding to the main components of the topic of interest, we defined a new area of research using the keywords virtual learning, competencies, and higher education for works published from 2017 to 2023.This search aimed to assess the global publication performance of virtual learning environments.It focused on several aspects, including (1) identifying the main areas of study in which the research was conducted, (2) examining the specific topics addressed by each publication, (3) analyzing the types of collaboration involved in the research, ( 4) determining the annual number of publications, and (5) identifying the critical research concepts explored in these publications.

Statistics
Painting a good picture of virtual learning platforms' implementation and use worldwide is essential.The statistical data were collected mainly from scientific articles and data extracted from reports generated on platforms such as Statista, Class Central, Coursera, and the World Economic Forum.
The statistics feeding the reports provided data from a decade, from 2012 to the beginning of 2022, indicating worldwide data and trends.An important concept developed in this section discusses MOOCS as open educational resources highly popularized by users on university platforms and in non-university companies.In addition, it shows data about global growth in online learning, the distribution of users worldwide, and the 5-year forecast.
This section aimed to know the statistics concerning virtual learning environments worldwide.This search encompassed various facets, such as (1) the distribution of virtual courses and the number of users in the last decade, (2) countries with more learners and the number of new users, and (3) the projection of new learners in the next five years.

Results
The findings for each of the three strategies employed follow:

Systematic literature review
Below are the findings answering each research question of this systematic literature review.Table 1 shows the most cited articles in the database of the studies analyzed, identifying the authors, the publication year, the publishing journal, and the number of times cited.For the most part, the journals specialize in the areas of engineering, technology, and education.The most cited article [15], "The Smart Classroom as a Means to the Development of ESD Methodologies", researched Smart Classrooms in 2020.It stood out with a high level of adequacy, describing problem-based learning methods and projects, case studies, and cooperative inquiry.It reported technological developments, environmental conditions, and processes.It identified the simulation of Education for Sustainable Development as the methodology with the least adequacy in a smart classroom because it was conducted mainly online and not face-to-face (Cebrián et al., 2020).

RQ1:
Knowing the most cited articles allows us to determine which studies have had the most impact on the scientific community, identify trends, and understand the implications generated by research into these topics.
Thus, the most cited articles in an area of knowledge provide an overview of the most influential topics and authors; they can guide a line of research, identify gaps in knowledge, suggest collaborative networks, and lead to decisions based on scientific evidence.This information is crucial because it shows the state of the art and serves as a reference for future research based on the validated results of these works.In addition, the number of citations helps the authors assess the relevance and impact of their research.

RQ2: What are the issues and trends addressed?
Analyzing the studies to find gaps in the research topic, we identified the articles' two main themes and trends.Table 2 shows that the topics and trends most mentioned and explored in the articles were virtual learning (36%), for example, study [4], which developed a tool to implement the Erasmus+ project entitled Environmental Learning Innovation for More Knowledge and Better Jobs.One of its main objectives was to improve students' knowledge of environmental engineering and make their skills and competencies more attractive to the labor market (Cocârţă et al., 2019).Virtual reality (21%), such as article [7], explored the potential interventions of VR and MR in education and workforce development in the construction sector, improving understanding of the main differences between novices and experts and explaining how VR and MR can facilitate acquiring tacit knowledge and expertise to address the current deficit of competencies in the construction sector (Wu et al., 2019).Competencies development (21%), such as study [8] that reported an innovative concept of standardized, automated hardware, virtual instrumentation software, and simulation-based support with an assessment strategy to identify and reflect on the outcomes of students' competency learning experiences (Pavlasek et al., 2020).
From the data shown in the table, we can relate virtual learning platforms with virtuality strategies involving new technologies such as Extended Reality, which includes augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality.Many applications employ these new technologies, including the visualization of objects and scenarios, 360°virtual tours with images, and the currently booming training in specialized equipment and task performance.The immersion these bring to the learning experiences allows students access to museums, cities, laboratories, industry, and remote spaces that are difficult to attend in person.

RQ3: What is the keyword that best describes the study?
To identify the most relevant concept explored in each study, we assigned a keyword that best describes its content based on the interest of this systematic review.The four categories of keyword grouping were: • Simulation for learning: 34% (11 studies) investigated different forms of simulation for learning with students, such as article [14] in which active learning activities developed in virtual learning environments and supported by computer simulations were designed and implemented to teach numerical methods.Addressing a real-life engineering problem, students analyzed a vehicle's suspension system, and simulation-based activity provided an environment to analyze the effect of numerical method parameters to solve a set of ordinary differential equations (Tudon-Martinez et al., 2020).Article [20] focused on developing and integrating Virtual Learning Factory (VLF) tools that can be used in production management and engineering teaching to help students use simulation and virtual reality in their manufacturing studies and practical projects with industrial companies (Mahmood et al., 2021).
• AR/VR application: 18% (6 studies) focused on implementing virtual and augmented reality tools.For example, article [9] presented an approach focused on using virtual reality as an educational tool to help resolve industrial challenges through interactive education for future engineers (López Ríos et al., 2020).Article [25] provided a 3D vision of the educational needs to design high-quality images and animation and then use virtual reality glasses for immersion (Jiang, 2021;Wu et al., 2019).
• Virtual environments: 24% (8 studies) focused primarily on the research and analysis of virtual environments, such as article [3], which integrated learning resources related to the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0 in a remote and virtual laboratory environment for higher education and research (Cardosa et al., 2019).Article [10] analyzed the feasibility of combining virtual reality technology with education in first-and second-year college students, who improved their performance markedly after using the virtual learning platform (Zhang et al., 2020).
• Distance education: 24% (8 studies) focused on research on distance education.For example, article [5] examined quantifying the level of development reached by teachers in pedagogical mediation and digital competencies that allowed them to integrate technological and communicative changes into distance learning processes (Garita-González et al., 2019).Study [26] occurred at the National University of Piura in Peru, in which a flipped classroom model was applied through a virtual Moodle platform to develop research competencies (Benites et al., 2021).
As mentioned in the research question above, the studies reveal great expectations about learning strategies involving remote education, virtual environments using technology, and accessing educational resources such as simulators.

RQ4:
For which area of application was the study conducted?
The specific application area in which the use of virtual simulation platforms and tools for learning and skills development was also identified (Table 3).As in the case of "higher education," study [19] took place in a Mexican university with 310 professional students from 12 different courses; it offered an alternative assessment method for a personalized evaluation of competency development using gamification in virtual reality (Garcia et al., 2021)."Industrial engineering education," such as study [27], presented the conceptual development and testing of a virtual factory learning toolkit to help students exploit enabling technologies like simulation and virtual reality in their manufacturing studios and hands-on projects with industrial companies (Mahmood et al., 2021).
In "clinical education," study [13] described a simulation of a virtual patient having difficulties adhering to treatment to foster the relational skills that nurses need in such situations (Rouleau  , 2020).In "business education," study [17] analyzed game-based business simulation as one of the most important teaching and learning tools in business education (Wach & Gaweł, 2020).
This information highlights the diversity of topics addressed with the appropriate use of virtual learning strategies, finding similarities in the experience one wants to share with students, whether in industrial, academic, clinical, or business environments.Virtual platforms have become a learning source for users worldwide to acquire knowledge and skills and develop competencies in various areas of knowledge.

SciVal
The SciVal search extracted relevant information from the most significant visualizations of virtual platforms for learning and skills development in recent years.
Figure 3 displays classification clusters of the different study topics, providing the opportunity to identify the convergences of the branches of knowledge in which more research has occurred in recent years: Social Sciences (52%), Computer Science (50%), and Engineering (32%).However, the overlap between Social Sciences and Computer Science is remarkable.In the area of Social Sciences, the most outstanding sub-area is Education (48%), and in Computer Science: Computer networks and communication (26%), and Computer science applications (22%).This analysis reinforces the Systematic Review of Literature findings, which emphasized using technologies for education and their contributions to developing competencies.The undoubted relationship between education and the development of computational tools puts into perspective the popularity of virtual platforms for learning.
Concerning how these investigations were generated and collaborated, Table 4 reveals that collaboration was institutional, but there were significant percentages of international and national collaborations.
Remarkably, just over 50% of publications were by only one author or in collaboration with colleagues from the same institution, and the others were collaborations of authors at national and international levels.This shows the growing importance of working together from different perspectives and scenarios to enrich research and generate meaningful findings.

Higher education 6
Industrial engineering education 4

Business education 2
Teacher training 2

Food industry 1
Technical drawing 1

Management sciences 1
Professional practice 1

Sustainable education 1
Communication sciences education 1

Economics education 1
Figure 4 displays the comparative analysis of publications over the last five years; note that 2022-2023 is still incomplete.The growing interest of researchers in the subject is evident, starting in 2018, but by 2021, there was a notable increase, probably related to the pandemic that began in 2020.Developments in virtual platforms increased, given the need to continue education for the population worldwide.In turn, interest in the virtual educational offerings on university and nonuniversity platforms proliferated, as discussed in the next section.
Figure 5 is a word cloud of key phrases of the most recurrent trends in research over the past five years.It shows that the most popular topics were related to education and computer science and the relative relationships among these.
Knowing the concepts continuously emerging in research topics can help frame the main components to consider and investigate from various perspectives necessary for better proposals.

Statistics
Open educational resources have developed since 1999 when MIT opened a project called "OpenCourseWare."Subsequently, many higher education institutions created versions and released them to the general public.Copyright licenses such as CreativeCommons developed from the need to share open resources, which allow intellectual property to be preserved by freeing up resources (Pernías-Peco & Luján-Mora, 2014).
In 2012, the Times published an article called "The Year of the MOOC" (Massive Open Online Courses) (Pappano, 2012), establishing the official opening of what we know as Online Learning Platforms.By the end of 2021, close to 20,000 new online courses for learning existed, as shown in Figure 6 These courses were primarily divided into Business (21%), Technology (20%), Social
The first decade of MOOCS saw 220 M users and 19.4K online courses at 950 universities, according to the Class Central report in "A Decade of MOOCs: A Review of MOOC Stats and Trends in 2021."Many of the online courses offered were created by companies such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Coursera, and edX, the latter being the most popular companies in the market (Shah, 2021b).
According to the World Economic Forum in the "Coursera Impact Report 2021," the 10 countries with the most users on the Coursera platform were mainly in Asia Pacific (India, China), followed by North America (USA, Mexico, Canada), United Kingdom, Latin America (Brazil, Colombia), and Egypt (Figure 6).
Likewise, Table 5 reports the 10 countries with the highest rate of new users registered on the platform from emerging economies (Wood, 2022)."Online Education-Segment Data Analysis & Forecast", published by Statista in 2022, identified three significant trends in its analysis: • Online University Education includes undergraduate and postgraduate degrees and tertiary learning platforms like Coursera and edX.
• Online Platform Learning includes courses, badges, and micro-credentials (Coursera, EdX, Udacity, Duolingo, Babbel, etc.) • Professional Certificates: certifications by professional institutions (CPA, CFA, PMP) Figure 7 shows the growth forecast for registered users based on the trends for some regions of interest.Due to market regulations, China will lose around 60 million platform users (Miller, 2022).
A significant increase in the number of new users in India is expected in the next 5 years.Figure 8 shows and reaffirms that the "Online Learning Platforms" will experience the most growth.

Framework proposal
Based on the results of this research, we propose a framework containing the most relevant features and information about the virtual platforms for developing competencies in higher education from the last decade until now (Figure 9).This framework revolves around students as the primary beneficiaries, with teachers facilitating knowledge transfer, the adoption of virtual platforms to enhance the learning experience and leveraging virtuality as the medium to achieve educational goals.We define a "virtual  learning platform" as an ecosystem of educational technology tools that allows self-management and personalization of learning so that students can develop and reinforce their competencies.

Discussion and conclusions
Knowing the contexts of previous studies leads to recognizing their contributions to future research.One can identify which topics of interest still need to be addressed in different environments to enrich the findings (Table 3, Figure 3).Virtual education is usually associated with a computer or any mobile device; however, the goal is to connect any discipline's contents to these technologies (Lucía Gonzalez-Carrión et al., 2020).Findings have shown that virtual platforms and tools can be applied in different knowledge areas, which users accept and favorably adopt.
The three strategies that comprise the methodology provide observations about educational technology for learning different topics, which suggests that virtual platforms for learning have been successfully exploited for more than a decade by university and non-university organizations, for-profit and non-profit, for the training and teaching of different topics worldwide for anyone interested in learning.Figure 4 shows the growth of interest in publications over the last three years, opening the way to research to improve existing proposals and adapt them for current professional preparation.Research, education, and development must be one.We have an excellent opportunity to reduce the educational gap between developed and developing countries and within developing countries, where the gaps in schools, resources, and content are also considerable (Zamora-Antuñano et al., 2022).These findings indicate the opportunity to create virtual resources to support education, ongoing training, and integral development of students.
Through the bibliographic review in indexed databases such as Scopus and Web of Science, we identified the most cited articles, the trends they address, the keywords, and the areas of most interest in virtual learning and skills development, finding relevant information for new lines of research.The recurring themes were higher education, distance and virtual educational environments, and competencies development, where the areas of education and computer sciences were prevalent in the studies and articles developed in the last five years (Table 2, Figures 3 and 5).Education faces increasing demands.Spaces and times are changing, the actors involved in the different training processes have more variants, and the integration of virtual platforms as a teaching and learning strategy has become crucial in all these processes (Valencia et al., 2017).Virtual platforms and simulations have become allies to reinforce the content that students analyze with the teacher within the classroom for the practice and self-management of their learning.This analysis also shows that, in 2021, publications increased considerably in virtual platforms, virtual laboratories, simulation for learning, and technology for educational innovation.This phenomenon is proven by the statistical analysis that shows the high increase in the offerings of online courses on the different platforms and the increase in registered users (Figure 7, Table 5).The use of e-learning platforms should be encouraged, but the transition should be gradual so that agents understand the new learning strategy and how to maximize its potential (Onyema et al., 2020).An example is the Coursera platform, where the countries with the most users are the United States, India, and Mexico, and the countries with the highest growth rates are Paraguay, Lebanon, and the Philippines.

Implications
Learning through virtual platforms has become increasingly popular in recent years, especially in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.This study highlights the importance of using educational technology and virtual platforms, their evolution, and the need for further research to enrich the findings and enhance the quality of education.One of the possible implications of learning through virtual platforms is that it can increase access to education and training for people who would not otherwise have access.For example, people living in remote or rural areas or with disabilities that make it difficult to attend traditional face-toface classes can benefit from learning through virtual platforms.Another implication of learning through virtual platforms is the ability to personalize and individualize education and training.Virtual platforms can deliver personalized content to learners based on their needs and interests, enabling a more customized learning experience.
The implications of learning through virtual platforms are complex and diverse.While this approach to education and training can bring advantages, essential considerations must ensure that learning through virtual platforms is practical and accessible to all learners.At this point, some developing countries are already betting that the use of platforms will increase because it has been shown that they are excellent sources of knowledge and skills development.The proposed framework contains the most relevant key concepts in learning through virtual platforms, showing the need to facilitate access, provide flexibility, promote interactivity, leverage virtual and multimedia resources, and encourage self-learning.These characteristics contribute to an enriching educational experience adapted to the individual needs of the users.

Limitations and recommendations
A study limitation is the consultation with only two databases, Scopus and Web of Science, for the systematic literature review.The parameters used by the Scival tool came only from the Scopus database, which could have limited the scientific evidence reviewed.Also, the restriction of the terms used for the search in each database could be a limitation.Another consideration is that the authors decided the categories used to group the studies to answer some of the research questions based on their main topics of interest.
As part of the recommendations for future studies, we point out that this work presents a conceptual and contextual framework of the research conducted in recent years on virtual platforms and simulations for learning and skills development.We invite all those interested in this thematic area to scientific, educational, and practical inquiry into the references and characteristics in this study's findings.
Figure 2. PRISMA flow chart for this review.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Distribution of the publications shared by subject area.

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Annual number of publications.

Figure
Figure 5. Key research concepts.
Figure 6.Top 10 countries with the most users on Coursera worldwide (Wood, 2022).

Figure
Figure 9.A framework of virtual platforms for learning.