Morphing to an Educational Metaverse: AI, open practice, and playful designs for situated relational and immersive learning experiences (Metaverse-Edu)
EDUCON2022 Special Session – Call for Papers

Overview

The unprecedented implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, with its restrictions of physical interactions, instigated the digital education community to reinvigorate the way digital teaching and learning is designed, orchestrated, and assessed. The advent of emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED), Extended Reality (XR), Augmented Reality (VR), Virtual Reality (VR) and 360 videos pave the way for rethinking teaching strategies, pedagogies, activities, feedback and assessment as means to help students to be skilled, up-skilled and re-skilled in digital literacy, coding, collaboration, design thinking, creativity and research enfolded to what is coined as 21st century skills.

Developing adapted, automated, playful, and personalised digital learning experiences remain a challenge due to the different ways learning is manifested and because of the nebulous traditional learning spaces that may not support learning and teaching in situated, relational and authentic ways. Games and online video meeting platforms are utilised to host learning events and social meetings embroidering avatars for emancipating a collective, virtual, and social presence where social justice, collaboration, openness, and inclusivity, are the core principles for co-creating, re-using and transacting with learning resources, digital artefacts, digital learning certificates, rewards and minimum viable products from the outset. This shift to a more collective virtual and social presence is being signified as a Metaverse for co- experiencing learning in more customised, personalised, and multi-disciplinary orientations.

The Educational Metaverse can push the boundaries of free human expression, empowerment, embodiment, symbolic multimodal representations, equity, openness, and cultural freedom. The special session aims to present and elucidate on immersive technologies and media that will set the grounds for realising a Metaverse for education. We invite authors to submit contributions on emerging technologies, including conceptual underpinnings and applications of AIED, 3D VR, AR, XR, games, 360 videos, frameworks for tangible learning rewards (e.g., NFTs; smart contracts; learning certificates; learning credits) and playful interventions (e.g., play and game design thinking; frugal education; adaptive play; games for culture, social cohesion, and creativity) that will act as catalysts in morphing to an educational Metaverse.

Topics of Interest

Authors are invited to submit complete papers for the Metaverse-Edu special session. The topics includes the following:

• The use of immersive technologies including applications of AIED, XR, AR, VR, and 360 video for enhancing teaching and learning, for personalized learning and for developing 21st century skills.
• Utilization of autonomous, intelligent, and predictive agents for adaptive learning (Exploratory Learning Environments, Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Chatbots, Pedagogical agents, AI teaching assistants)
• The design of digital pedagogies for using emerging technologies (self-regulated learning, social and emotional learning, intelligent inquiry-based learning, collaborative learning, learning through conversations, learning-by-teaching)
• Big data, learning analytics and AIED to support blended and distance learning modes (formative and summative feedback analytics and immersive assessment)
• Playful and gameful designs for culture and society including games, game-based learning, gamification, systems thinking, design thinking, frugal design for positive impact on skillsets, culture, social cohesion, and social justice
• Tangible rewards for learning in the Metaverse including NFTs, blockchains, learning credits, decentralized accreditation systems, open badges, proof-of-learning, and accreditation frameworks
• Immersive technologies skills, competencies and capabilities for teachers and students to learn, use, re-use and assess
• Conceptual frameworks and case studies on how an educational Metaverse could optimize aspects of digital learning and teaching (learning design, flipped teaching, research, classroom management, assessment and feedback and student pastoral care)
• Ethics, data, privacy, equity, and inclusivity. Models, frameworks, use and misuse and practical manifestations of ethical, unbiased, and inclusive use of emerging technologies for education
• Resilience and capacity of emerging technologies to support learning in periods of crises (e.g., COVID-19, disruptive events, natural disasters) which may impede the human and social dimension of learning
• Emerging technologies and the Metaverse-Edu impact from the experiences of multiple-stakeholders including teachers, parents, immersive technologists, game designers, artists, policy makers and education leaders

Program Committee

Chairs

• Dr Petros Lameras, School of Computing, Electronics and Mathematics & Centre of Post-Digital Cultures, Coventry University, Coventry, UK ab3430@coventry.ac.uk
• Professor Sylvester Arnab, Centre of Post-Digital Cultures, Coventry University, Coventry, UK aa8110@coventry.ac.uk
• Dr Panagiotis Petridis, Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, UK p.petridis@aston.ac.uk

Members

• Dr Stathis Konstantinidis, University of Nottingham, UK
• Nektarios Moumoutzis, Lab of Distributed Multimedia Information Systems and Applications, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Technical University of Crete, Greece
• Dr George Kalmpourtzis, Infinitive Design Labs, France
• Ahmed Hosny, University of Waterloo, Canada

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