Published Paper Details:

: Extended Reality (XR), covering augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality, is increasingly proposed as a tool for transforming teaching and learning in higher education. Much of the existing evidence on XR adoption comes from well-resourced institutions in North America, Europe and East Asia, which leaves open the question of whether the same theoretical explanations hold in resource-constrained settings such as Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on XR adoption in higher education, drawing on constructivism, experiential learning theory, the Technology Acceptance Model, Diffusion of Innovations theory, situated learning theory and the Resource-Based View. The review synthesizes evidence from global, African and Ugandan sources to identify the internal institutional factors, namely technological readiness, human capacity, contextual adaptability and economic viability, that shape XR adoption, and it examines institutional support as a factor that strengthens or weakens these relationships rather than acting as an independent predictor. The review finds that existing frameworks explain individual and organizational adoption behavior reasonably well but rarely account for the infrastructural and cultural conditions typical of low-resource universities. It closes by identifying gaps around the localization of XR content, the sustainability of donor-funded pilots, and the limited empirical treatment of institutional support as a moderating variable, and it proposes a consolidated framework to guide future empirical research in this area.