The educational metaverse promises fulfilling ambitions of immersive learning, leveraging technology-based presence alongside narrative and/or challenge-based deep mental absorption. Most reviews of immersive learning research were outcomes-focused, few considered the educational practices and strategies. These are necessary to provide theoretical and pedagogical frameworks to situate outcomes within a context where technology is in concert with educational approaches. We sought a broader perspective of the practices and strategies used in immersive learning environments, and conducted a mapping survey of reviews, identifying 47 studies. Extracted accounts of educational practices and strategies under thematic analysis yielded 45 strategies and 21 practices, visualized as a network clustered by conceptual proximity. Resulting clusters “Active context”, “Collaboration”, “Engagement and Scaffolding”, “Presence”, and “Real and virtual multimedia learning” expose the richness of practices and strategies within the field. The visualization maps the field, supporting decision-making when combining practices and strategies for using the metaverse in education, highlights which practices and strategies are supported by the literature, and the presence and absence of diversity within clusters.

Advancing the field of research in Immersive Learning Environments requires avoiding the pitfalls of previous educational technologies. Studies must consider the actual use of these environments and the context where it occurs, not simply the technocentric perspectives on these environments. This paper provides an overview and analysis of surveys on this topic, in order to map the field and find out which information on actual uses of Immersive Learning Environments are reported, and hence which gaps need to be covered towards a robust, encompassing knowledge on their relationship with learning. Collected accounts of use were clustered via thematic analysis and contrasted with research areas in learning and technology, highlighting the gaps in the field and serving as a blueprint for research agendas on uses of immersive learning environments.

Gestural interaction devices emerged and originated various studies on multimodal human–computer interaction to improve user experience (UX). However, there is a knowledge gap regarding the use of these devices to enhance learning. We present an exploratory study which analysed the UX with a multimodal immersive videogame prototype, based on a Portuguese historical/cultural episode. Evaluation tests took place in high school environments and public videogaming events. Two users would be present simultaneously in the same virtual reality (VR) environment: one as the helmsman aboard Vasco da Gama’s fifteenth-century Portuguese ship and the other as the mythical Adamastor stone giant at the Cape of Good Hope. The helmsman player wore a VR headset to explore the environment, whereas the giant player used body motion to control the giant, and observed results on a screen, with no headset. This allowed a preliminary characterisation of UX, identifying challenges and potential use of these devices in multi-user virtual learning contexts. We also discuss the combined use of such devices, towards future development of similar systems, and its implications on learning improvement through multimodal human–computer interaction.

The use of virtual reality (VR) for industrial training helps minimize risks and costs by allowing more frequent and varied use of experiential learning activities, leading to active and improved learning. However, creating VR training experiences is costly and time-consuming, requiring software development experts. Additionally, current authoring tools lack integration with existing data and are desktop-oriented, which detach the pedagogic process of creating the immersive experience from experiencing it in a situated context. In this article, we present a novel interactive approach for immersive authoring of VR-based experiential training by the trainers themselves, from inside the virtual environment and without the support of development experts. The design includes identifying interactable elements, such as 3-D models, equipment, tools, settings, and environment. The trainer also specifies by demonstration the actions to be performed by trainees, as a virtual choreography. During course execution, trainees’ activities are also registered as virtual choreographies and matched to those specified by the trainer. Thus, trainer and trainee are culturally situated within their area semantics and social discourse, rather than adopting concepts of the VR system for the learning content. We conducted a usability case study with professionals from an international wind energy company, using detailed models of wind turbines and real-world procedures. Trainers set up a training course using the immersive authoring tool, and trainees executed the course. The learning experience and usability were analyzed, and the training was certified by comparing real-world task completion between a user who had undergone virtual training and a user who did not.