The metaverse, a rapidly evolving research area, is a virtual, interconnected universe that seamlessly integrates digital and physical realms, facilitating immersive experiences, social interaction, and economic activities across various fields, including computer science, business, and education. Despite its potential to transform current pedagogies and learning experiences through engaging, interactive, and fascinating educational techniques, research is limited in exploring its application, usability, and user experience, particularly for Thai undergraduate students in learning computer engineering courses. In response, we designed and developed an innovative metaverse-based learning system called the AIIS collaborative learning interface, tailored to European undergraduate students. While the original intent of AIIS was to cater to medical students, in this study, our objective was to assess its usability and applicability for computer science and engineering students, specifically focusing on the Asian demographic. After an initial pilot with European students in their local context, the research was extended to Thailand, where 21 Thai undergraduate students evaluated the platform’s usability. The observations from this study indicate that AIIS provides a dynamic, user-friendly learning environment. Nevertheless, the evaluation process unveiled some usability flaws that offer informative directions for future enhancements. Drawing from our observations, we formulated usability guidelines to guide designers and developers toward crafting more efficient metaverse systems, particularly those intended for educational use. Our results also underline the considerable promise that metaverse technologies hold for advancing higher education globally.

Besides their entertainment value, serious games can have beneficial therapeutic effects for elderly people that improve their health and well-being. Games are likely to be accepted by elderly persons who have enjoyed games their lives, and because there are more and more of such elderly, it is important to investigate games as a therapeutic device. This research reviewed the literature focusing on the effects of games on elderly persons in three main types of effects: physical, cognitive, and social effects. The majority of reviewed papers focused on physical and cognitive effects, and were published in recent years, which emphasizes the relative novelty of this topic and suggests that future research will need to address social impact as well. In addition, while many papers claimed positive impacts as a result of using games, our review found that more attention should be given to research designs.

This paper introduces four safety training episodes and virtual training technology called Immersive Safe Oceans which can be used in further education of professionals in immersive training scenarios. These episodes were developed for maritime safety and are under testing. Immersive Safe Oceans Technology is a cost-effective, portable technology that can be used on board just in time or in maritime training centers. Four introduced episodes, namely, (1) command bridge, (2) machine room, (3) crane, and (4) fire safety, illustrate how Immersive Safe Oceans technology can be used in various professional training scenarios. These episodes also emphasize the growing need for virtual reality training in the shipping industry. As a result, next generation learning will happen onboard in sophisticated virtual training centers.

Digitalization shapes the ways of learning, working, and entertainment. The Internet, which enables us to connect and socialize is evolving to become the metaverse, a post-reality universe, enabling virtual life parallel to reality. In addition to gaming and entertainment, industry and academia have noticed the metaverse’s benefits and possibilities. For industry, the metaverse is the enabler of the future digital workplace, and for academia, digital learning spaces enable realistic virtual training environments. A connection bridging the virtual world with physical production systems is required to enable digital workplaces and digital learning spaces. In this publication, extended reality–digital twin to real use cases are presented. The presented use cases utilize extended reality as high-level user interfaces and digital twins to create a bridge between virtual environments and robotic systems in industry, academia, and underwater exploration.

Wearable devices are currently popular for fitness tracking. However, these general usage devices only can track limited and prespecified exercises. In our previous work, we introduced ExerSense that segments, classifies, and counts multiple physical exercises in real-time based on a correlation method. It also can track user-specified exercises collected only one motion in advance. This paper is the extension of that work. We collected acceleration data for five types of regular exercises by four different wearable devices. To find the best accurate device and its position for multiple exercise recognition, we conducted 50 times random validations. Our result shows the robustness of ExerSense, working well with various devices. Among the four general usage devices, the chest-mounted sensor is the best for our target exercises, and the upper-arm-mounted smartphone is a close second. The wrist-mounted smartwatch is third, and the worst one is the ear-mounted sensor.