Abstract. Virtual Reality (VR) platforms hold significant potential to enhance student engagement through immersive and interactive learning experiences. These environments create dynamic spaces that can improve educational outcomes by fostering deeper engagement. However, existing research often overlooks critical motivational, cognitive, and social factors within VR settings, leading to fragmented and less effective learning experiences. This study examines how integrating these factors can enhance student participation and improve learning outcomes in VR educational contexts. Specifically, it applies the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to predict students' intent to use VR for learning. The findings indicate that incorporating these factors into TAM effectively predicts students' intent to use VR platforms, with key predictors including positive attitudes, enjoyment of immersive technology, and perceived performance. This study provides a solid foundation for understanding how motivational, cognitive, and social factors converge to influence learning outcomes in immersive environments, offering valuable insights for future research and practice in educational technology.

This study investigates the integration of the metaverse and artificial intelligence (AI) avatars in social science education, amidst global challenges that require holistic approaches to cultivate critical global citizenship. While virtual reality (VR) offers immersive learning potential, the effectiveness of the metaverse and AI avatars in shaping educational experiences remains underexplored. This study examines the impact of immersive metaverse learning, including AI avatars, on students' perceptions and intentions to use this technology for social science education. The study explores metaverse-based learning across diverse social science topics, including transitional environments design, food waste management, linguistics research, computational thinking in sociology, and grammar analysis. Findings indicate strong student engagement with immersive learning, supporting experiential learning theories and demonstrating potential for complex topic exploration. Regression analysis reveals that ‘Function,’ ‘Usefulness,’ and ‘Interest’ significantly predict students’ intent to use metaverse-based learning (R² = 0.588, p < .001), underscoring the importance of engaging and interactive elements. However, students perceived environments with AI avatars as more difficult to navigate (p = 0.037), highlighting usability challenges despite their potential for interactivity. Further analysis showed that while AI avatars encouraged interaction, their limited implementation in this study may have restricted their perceived effectiveness. Additionally, students engaging with AI-driven environments expressed mixed experiences, with some appreciating the interactivity while others found them less intuitive. Further research is needed to explore long-term impacts, refine AI-driven learning interactions, and expand applications across diverse educational settings.

This study examines the effectiveness of a game-based metaverse platform in enhancing learning outcomes in economics education. Students were virtually transported back to the Great Depression within the metaverse. System data and self-assessment surveys assessed aspects such as ease of use and perceived usefulness for learning, evaluating their impact on student performance and their intent to use the metaverse for future learning. These measures also captured students' reported interest and enjoyment, gauging their engagement levels. According to self-assessment surveys, students found the metaverse platform engaging, relevant, vivid, and social, highlighting the successful integration of pedagogy and technology. The study's results are supported by regression analysis, which demonstrated a strong positive relationship with an R2 of 0.853, indicating that a significant proportion of variance in student engagement can be explained by the aesthetics of the metaverse platform and the interest it generated. Challenges such as technical issues and varying learning efficiencies were also noted. Overall, the study highlights the potential of game-based learning environments and virtual reality in economics education to foster student engagement and promote the adoption of innovative learning systems.

This study delves into the educational possibilities and user experiences offered by a Metaverse platform, utilizing immersive Virtual Reality (VR) to bolster engagement and learning in communication and grammar. In the wake of advancing digital technologies, there's an imperative to reevaluate conventional educational practices for their effectiveness in engaging students and fostering in-depth learning. Despite VR's potential in education, integrating these immersive experiences effectively into pedagogical frameworks and ensuring their accessibility and usability poses significant challenges. Our research employed a mixed-method approach, blending quantitative analysis to gauge user engagement, learning effectiveness, and acceptance of technology with qualitative feedback for deeper insight into user experiences. Participants navigated specially designed Metaverse scenarios, engaging with AI avatars through interactive tasks and narrative explorations across two distinct modules focused on grammar intricacies and the evolution of search technologies. The quantitative findings underscore a substantial correlation between users' interest and their intent to utilize the platform, accounting for 59% of the variance in intent. Qualitative responses highlight a robust engagement level and favorable perceptions of the Metaverse experience, particularly driven by the method being interesting. 

The use of the metaverse in education has gained increasing attention as a potential supplement to traditional teaching methods. This study aimed to investigate the impact of experiential learning on students' intent to use metaverse learning platforms and to explore how the metaverse can support these approaches. The study included participants from three countries and used metaverse scenes, such as a restaurant or Hong Kong scene, to complete learning tasks and interact with Non-Player Characters (NPCs) to complete assessments over a semester. The results of a correlational analysis showed that pedagogical factors had a greater impact on students' intent to use the metaverse for educational purposes than technical factors, which was unexpected. However, the study also identified challenges in adapting content to match the needs and skills of students who may not be familiar with games, as well as using the metaverse for more advanced pedagogical approaches, due to limitations in integrating content. Based on the findings, recommendations for educators, designers, and researchers are provided to enhance the effectiveness of metaverse-based education. Overall, the results of this study suggest that the metaverse can be a valuable addition to traditional teaching methods.

Despite the rapid advancement of virtual reality (VR) and its integration into educational settings, the adoption of metaverse learning platforms often encounters challenges. These include technical limitations and a lack of understanding of how these platforms impact learning effectiveness and user engagement. Previous studies have revealed mixed outcomes regarding the effectiveness of VR in education, with many platforms failing to meet user expectations in terms of usability and learning outcomes. This uncertainty hampers the broader adoption of immersive learning technologies. Thus, this study aims to investigate what factors contribute most significantly to the effectiveness and user adoption of metaverse learning platforms. Specifically, it examines how perceived usefulness and efficiency influence learners' intentions to use these platforms. Linear regression analysis was employed to analyze the data, revealing that perceived usefulness (USE) and perceived efficiency (PERF2) are significant predictors of learners’ intent to use the platform, explaining 62.6% of the variance in intent scores.

The Metaverse is rapidly gaining recognition as an innovative educa- tional tool, offering immersive and interactive experiences that align with con- temporary teaching methodologies. This study evaluates the Metaverse’s efficacy in enhancing student engagement and motivation, with a focus on its design attributes. By integrating quantitative analyses of student perspectives with qual- itative insights, the research identifies key factors—ease of acquiring new skills, user-perceived efficiency, and the interactivity of the design—as central to fos- tering engagement. The investigation involved 51 students from language and European history courses, who engaged in Metaverse simulations to practice rel- evant skills: a telephony group honed business communication in a virtual office, while a history group delved into the 15th-century spice trade in European set- tings. Their uniformly positive responses underscore the Metaverse’s potential to engage a broad spectrum of learners. Notably, the simplicity of skill acquisition and perceived learning efficiency accounted for approximately 59.9% of the vari- ance in students’ willingness to use the Metaverse for educational purposes. The study also sheds light on gender-specific preferences, with female students show- ing a higher propensity towards the method and explores the impact of moderate gaming experience on adaptability to this novel learning medium. These findings highlight the Metaverse’s versatility as an educational resource and underscore the importance of considering diverse learner backgrounds to optimize its pedagogical value.

This study aimed to examine the effect of social learning on student intent to use a metaverse learning platform. With limited empirical evidence of social learning in a metaverse, the study sought to investigate the potential impact of group activities and pedagogy on student perception of the platform. Results from a linear regression showed that pedagogy was significant in students' intent to use the platform, while technology was not. The impact of group activities on student intent to use was not significant. However, the study showed that students who participated in group activities engaged in more reflective learning, leading to a deeper understanding of the material and the development of critical thinking skills. The study highlights the need for further research to understand the complexity of social learning and pedagogy in metaverse-based learning, particularly the features that would support collective intelligence. The results suggest that incorporating reflective activities into metaverse-based learning can enhance the social learning experience and promote meaningful and relevant learning.

Through an education-centric metaverse learning application, this research aims to assess the use of narrative richness to deliver media, language, and sustainability literacy education. The 21st-century learning needs require teaching and learning resources to be shared and managed more effectively across institutions. The use of metaverse features can help to manage varying narrative richness to boost learning reflection and attitude. Despite its potential, it is unclear how narrative richness in the metaverse can enhance teaching and learning. The study proposed in this research, which includes institutions from four Asian countries, is driven by this knowledge and evidence gap. Module leaders conceptualize and evaluate a purpose-built metaverse-learning application to produce rich and realistic learning experiences. We utilize narratives to enhance the realism of learning experiences and will assess the effects of narrative richness on learning reflection and attitude.

The goal of this study is to introduce and evaluate a novel online simulation method built upon buyer-seller roleplay in a private social network for housing economics education. This is at a time when classroom disruptions due to COVID-19 require new methods to engage with students asynchronously. While methods like game-based learning simulations show potential to engage, they are often high-fidelity and require high setup costs. This is also the case for existing housing simulation games, for which besides being single player mode, costs for technical customization and learning curve reduces adoption in the classroom. In this context, the use of social networks to facilitate a low-fidelity buyer-seller housing roleplay may provide flexible learning goals and peer engagement, but its implementation is unclear. This gap in knowledge has motivated this investigation, for which undergraduate students in Hong Kong participated in property buyer-seller roleplay. Students posted available property and buyers bid for them using comments on a private social media app, Soqqle.