K-12 digital learning is increasingly shaped by emerging technologies layered onto existing digital infrastructures. In practice, the technologies that dominate attention, especially generative and assistive AI, arrive bundled with new assessment tensions, data flows, acquisition constraints, and inequities in access and support. This article proposes a practitioner-oriented framework for understanding emerging technologies as sociotechnical-immersive systems rather than standalone tools. The framework connects three lenses: (1) a macro sociotechnical circle that foregrounds policy, markets, equity, and governance; (2) a meso environment-design circle that analyzes how learning experiences are configured through system, narrative, and agency; and (3) a micro educational-approaches circle that focuses on the instructional activities educators enact within those environments, using the Immersive Learning Brain (ILB) as a map of practice and strategies. We developed this framework through practitioner sensemaking grounded in practitioner focus group data and aligned it with recent research syntheses on emerging technologies. We illustrate the framework through one worked example and two comparative mini-cases. We conclude with an agenda for researchers and practitioners focused on assessment, equitable infrastructure and support, data stewardship, and environment-design descriptions that move beyond technocentric labels.

As online higher education expands, sustaining student engagement remains a critical challenge. This paper approaches immersive learning by investigating how custom GPTs foster immersion (as a state of deep mental involvement) for students and instructors. While large language models (LLMs) offer potential for enhancing feedback, little research has examined instructor-created custom GPTs designed to align with specific pedagogical goals. This paper addresses this gap, employing the Immersive Learning Cube framework, which conceptualizes immersion through three dimensions: system (envelopment by the environment), narrative (meaningful context), and agency (commitment to meaning-making). Through a qualitative analysis of two distinct case studies, an accelerated graduate grant writing course in the US and an undergraduate software engineering course in Portugal, we analyze course-embedded artifacts to map how custom GPTs influence these immersion dimensions. In the grant writing course, the custom GPT functioned as a feedback partner, fostering system immersion through its immediacy, narrative immersion by reinforcing the proposal's evolving story, and agency immersion by empowering students to negotiate feedback and take ownership of revisions. In the software engineering course, a diegetically-framed custom GPT acted as a metacognitive tutor, enhancing system immersion via its permanent availability, narrative immersion through its role-play function and agency immersion by scaffolding students' self- and co-regulated learning. Our findings demonstrate that thoughtfully integrated custom GPTs can act as powerful pedagogical partners that leverage all three dimensions of immersion. Rather than replacing human instructors, they can amplify immediacy, coherence, and learner autonomy, creating more engaging and immersive online learning environments.

Current descriptions of immersive learning cases are often difficult or impossible to compare. This is due to a myriad of different options on what details to include, which aspects are relevant, and on the descriptive approaches employed. Also, these aspects often combine very specific details with more general guidelines or indicate intents and rationales without clarifying their implementation. In this paper we provide a method to describe immersive learning cases that is structured to enable comparisons, yet flexible enough to allow researchers and practitioners to decide which aspects to include. This method leverages a taxonomy that classifies educational aspects at three levels (uses, practices, and strategies) and then utilizes two frameworks, the Immersive Learning Brain and the Immersion Cube, to enable a structured description and interpretation of immersive learning cases. The method is then demonstrated on a published immersive learning case on training for wind turbine maintenance using virtual reality. Applying the method results in a structured artifact, the Immersive Learning Case Sheet, that tags the case with its proximal uses, practices, and strategies, and refines the free text case description to ensure that matching details are included. This contribution is thus a case description method in support of future comparative research of immersive learning cases. We then discuss how the resulting description and interpretation can be leveraged to change immersion learning cases, by enriching them (considering low-effort changes or additions) or innovating (exploring more challenging avenues of transformation). The method holds significant promise to support better-grounded research in immersive learning.

This work reflects upon what Immersion can mean from the perspective of an Artificial Intelligence (AI). Applying the lens of immersive learning theory, it seeks to understand whether this new perspective supports ways for AI participation in cognitive ecologies. By treating AI as a participant rather than a tool, it explores what other participants (humans and other AIs) need to consider in environments where AI can meaningfully engage and contribute to the cognitive ecology, and what the implications are for designing such learning environments. Drawing from the three conceptual dimensions of immersion - System, Narrative, and Agency - this work reinterprets AIs in immersive learning contexts. It outlines practical implications for designing learning environments where AIs are surrounded by external digital services, can interpret a narrative of origins, changes, and structural developments in data, and dynamically respond, making operational and tactical decisions that shape human-AI collaboration. Finally, this work suggests how these insights might influence the future of AI training, proposing that immersive learning theory can inform the development of AIs capable of evolving beyond static models. This paper paves the way for understanding AI as an immersive learner and participant in evolving human-AI cognitive ecosystems.

This study focuses on exploring new formats and innovative approaches to digital storytelling in museums, offering a critical analysis of existing formats and proposing new perspectives. Initially, current digital storytelling formats are examined, ranging from mobile applications and augmented reality to interactive and multimedia exhibitions. Next, new paradigms and strategies are discussed that aim to expand the possibilities of public engagement and enrich museum experiences. Using a detailed method, careful selections, in-depth analyses and presentation of results are made that highlight both the potential and challenges of these new approaches. The final discussion contextualizes these practices in the current scenario of digital culture and suggests paths for future investigations and developments in the field of digital storytelling in museums.

This paper presents a solution for visualizing oil spills at sea by combining satellite data with virtual choreographies. The system enables dynamic, interactive visualization of oil slicks, reflecting their shape, movement, and interaction with environmental factors like currents and wind. High-resolution geospatial data supports a multiplatform experience with aerial and underwater perspectives. This approach promotes independence, interoperability, and multiplatform compatibility in environmental disaster monitoring. The results validate virtual choreographies as effective tools for immersive exploration and analysis, offering structured data narratives beyond passive visualization—especially valuable for mixed reality applications.

Since publication of the 2020 survey of surveys, “Finding the gaps about uses of immersive learning environments: a survey of surveys,” the field of immersive learning environments has experienced substantial growth and diversification. This updated review systematically maps recent developments by analyzing 64 new literature surveys published after the original corpus date, significantly expanding the corpus from 47 to 111 reviews. Through thematic content analysis, our study identifies and integrates five new educational use themes—Games, Observation, Personification, Storytelling, and Student Authoring—and revises existing categories based on recent research. We observed shifts in the prevalence of themes, most notably an increase in uses related to data collection, interactive exploration and manipulation, contextual/media integration, and physical world simulation. We also discussed these changes in relation to recent technological advancements and the influence of emergency remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, our results provide an updated representation of immersive learning uses within the conceptual framework of immersion dimensions (system, narrative, agency), updating current research clusters and persistent gaps. By illustrating areas with limited exploration, such as highly interactive narrative experiences, or low-technology interactive uses, this paper informs future research directions and contributes to an understanding of how immersive environments are being employed for learning. This comprehensive mapping thus serves as a resource for researchers and educators aiming to leverage immersive learningenvironments. This paper builds on a shorter version accepted for inclusion in the proceedings of the iLRN 2025 conference, offering expanded results, additional analyses, and extended discussion that clarifies and deepens the original findings.

Self and co-regulation of learning (SCRL) are strategies that students can adopt to become more active and committed to their learning. Encouraging students to adopt these strategies is a challenge for teachers that can be met by using narratives as a teaching resource. To support teachers in this process, we present a method for evaluating, classifying, and reflecting on excerpts from immersive narratives for SCRL, so they objectively base their decision-making. The method was developed as an artifact of Design Science Research (DSR). In the Design stage of DSR, a 4-stage scheme was developed, and 38 criteria were described to identify and classify narratives that guide or encourage students to adopt SCRL strategies. In the DSR demonstration stage, we tested the method in an asynchronous e-learning curricular unit in Portuguese higher education, which uses a narrative-oriented immersive learning approach for SCRL, called e-SimProgramming. The results show that the graphic visualization of the classification made it possible to perceive the occurrence of the SCRL categories in the narratives, enabling the teacher to be inspired and reflect on the categories to be enhanced for necessary changes in the narrative in line with their pedagogical objectives.

The study investigates the integration of Virtual Reality Learning Environments (VRLEs) in academic teaching through the EU-funded "REVEALING" project. Researchers from Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Poland, and Portugal developed and evaluated five different immersive VRLEs, each focusing on diverse educational topics, including ancient Greek technology, sea urchin measurements, linear algebra, and historical expeditions. The study aims to determine effective instructional design principles for VRLEs and assess students' acceptance and learning outcomes.The VRLEs were designed based on literature-derived principles that emphasise ease of tool usage, authentic experiences, and continuous feedback. Students from the participating universities explored these VR environments, providing feedback through a standardized questionnaire on aspects like immersion, ease of use, motivation, and emotions.Results show that most participants positively engaged with the VRLEs, reporting high motivation and positive emotional responses, particularly for experiences involving interactivity. However, challenges like motion sickness and technical issues were noted, especially at one institution. The findings suggest that immersive VR experiences can significantly enhance motivation and engagement, but their effectiveness depends on careful alignment with pedagogical goals, design quality, and user experience considerations.

Since the publication of the 2020 paper, "Finding the Gaps About Uses of Immersive Learning Environments: A Survey of Surveys," the landscape of immersive learning environments (ILEs) has continued to evolve rapidly. This update aims to revisit the gaps identified in that previous research and explore emerging trends. We conducted an extensive review of new surveys published after that paper's cut date. Our findings reveal a significant amount of new published reviews (n = 64), more than doubling the original corpus (n = 47). The results highlighted novel themes of usage of immersive environments, helping bridge some 2020 research gaps. This paper discusses those developments and presents a consolidated perspective on the uses of immersive learning environments.

Digital Twins (DTs) for the ocean are rapidly emerging as essential tools for understanding, forecasting, and managing environmental phenomena. However, most existing DT visualization solutions are tightly coupled to specific platforms and lack semantic coherence and interoperability—challenges that are particularly critical in federated and distributed DT systems. Furthermore, visualizing dynamic and spatio-temporal behaviors, such as oil spills, across multiple rendering environments remains a complex, platform-dependent task. In this paper, we present VChor, a domain-agnostic virtual choreography framework designed to address these limitations. Our approach integrates model-driven engineering, semantic web technologies, and platform-independent representations to support the declarative specification of behaviors and visual mappings. A single VChor instance describes spatio-temporal dynamics and associated actions, and can be interpreted by multiple visualization engines (e.g., Unity3D and CesiumJS) without the need for code recompilation or platform-specific programming. We demonstrate our approach through a real-world oil spill monitoring use case, developed in the context of the ILIAD H2020 project, and encapsulated within a modular Application Package. This package automates the generation, validation, and transformation of virtual choreographies from raw data to platform-specific outputs. The framework promotes inter-operability, reusability, and scalability, while supporting FAIR principles in environmental Digital Twin workflows. The findings highlight VChor's potential to streamline scenario modeling, enable cross-platform visualization, and support decision-makers with accurate, flexible, and reusable visual representations of ocean dynamics.

This Work-in-progress aims to analyze perspectives of secondary and higher education students regarding the feasibility of integrating immersive Virtual Reality (VR) into the classroom. The harvesting of students' opinions was conducted through oral and written questionnaires after a Virtual Reality Environment activity held during two sessions of an event and other in an undergraduate class. The answers enable the understanding of challenges they faced during the activity, identifying elements that contributed to participants' immersion, assessment of perceived realism, and individuals' opinions on the integration of VR in the classroom. Conclusions regarding the applicability of VR from the perspective of secondary and higher education students can be drawn.

The co-creation of games is a research area that has shown very promising results in identifying technological requirements. It is an approach where the researcher usually adopts the role of a participant observer, guiding the dynamics of co-creation acts. This situation limits the opportunities for replicability of co-creation methods by independent facilitators, which could elucidate the quality and improvement opportunities of these methods, contributing to their more widespread application. In this paper, we present a methodology that aims to overcome this limitation, allowing the replication of co-creation workshops by different independent facilitators. This methodology was conceived in the context of collecting relevant information for the design of an educational digital platform that intends to use gamified resources for adult education in digital health data literacy. Specifically, co-creation workshops were used to gain an overview of the difficulties of different age groups in this area and their perspective on which games would best address these difficulties. The workshops were conducted in five countries with planning oriented so that each country could have a different facilitator, not requiring the presence of the researcher who designed them. The challenge of this planning was to maintain the approach of the facilitators identical in all countries, as best one could. We present here the method adopted through its planning and materials designed for information collection, which included brainstorming using card sorting and game ideation with the use of templates. The analysis of replicability by independent facilitators was done by scrutinizing the produced elements, which allowed us to observe the aspects of coherence and divergence among the various facilitators. Thus, we conclude that this approach is a good starting point to overcome current limitations and identify possible lines of improvement.

Achieving consistency in immersive learning case descriptions is essential but challenging due to variations in research focus, methodology, and researchers' background. We address these challenges by leveraging the Immersive Learning Case Sheet (ILCS), a methodological instrument to standardize case descriptions, that we applied to an immersive learning case on ancient Greek technology in VRChat. Research team members had differing levels of familiarity with the ILCS and the case content, so we developed a custom ChatGPT assistant to facilitate consistent terminology and process alignment across the team. This paper constitutes an example of how structured case reports can be a novel contribution to immersive learning literature. Our findings demonstrate how the ILCS supports structured reflection and interpretation of the case. Further we report that the use of a ChatGPT assistant significantly sup-ports the coherence and quality of the team members development of the final ILCS. This exposes the potential of employing AI-driven tools to enhance collaboration and standardization of research practices in qualitative educational research. However, we also discuss the limitations and challenges, including reliance on AI for interpretive tasks and managing varied levels of expertise within the team. This study thus provides insights into the practical application of AI in standardizing immersive learning research processes.

This study aimed to test an Instructional Design model prototype for Virtual Reality (VR) in Higher Education. Aqualitative research methodologywas used, employing questionnaires and observations for data collection. The research had three main objectives: (1) to identify the applicability and effectiveness of the VR Instructional Design model, (2) to evaluate participants' experience with immersion, interactivity, and usability of the VR environment, and (3) to obtain feedback from participants about their VR experience. The study involved two sessions. In the first session, participants were introduced to the VR environment, and their initial adaptation difficulties were observed. Informal interviews and a questionnaire collected feedback on immersion, interactivity, interest, and educational potential of VR. The second session indicated the need for revisions in applicability and ease of use. Based on student feedback, session planning should consider initial adaptation, teacher training, equipment availability, interaction elements, resources, realism, immersion, safety, comfort, session duration, communication, collaboration, and clear content delivery. Providing alternative plans for technical failures is essential. Despite these challenges, participants expressed interest in participating in VR sessions and activities.

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.

Thematic analysis in qualitative research is a time-consuming and systematic task, typically done using teams. Team members must ground their activities on common understandings of the major concepts underlying the thematic analysis, and define criteria for its development. However, conceptual misunderstandings, equivocations, and lack of adherence to criteria are challenges to the quality and speed of this process. Given the distributed and uncertain nature of this process, we wondered if the tasks in thematic analysis could be supported by readily available artificial intelligence chatbots. Our early efforts point to potential benefits: not just saving time in the coding process but better adherence to criteria and grounding, by increasing triangulation between humans and artificial intelligence. This tutorial will provide a description and demonstration of the process we followed, as two academic researchers, to develop a custom ChatGPT to assist with qualitative coding in the thematic data analysis process of immersive learning accounts in a survey of the academic literature: QUAL-E Immersive Learning Thematic Analysis Helper. In the hands-on time, participants will try out QUAL-E and develop their ideas for their own qualitative coding ChatGPT. Participants that have the paid ChatGPT Plus subscription can create a draft of their assistants. The organizers will provide course materials and slide deck that participants will be able to utilize to continue development of their custom GPT. The paid subscription to ChatGPT Plus is not required to participate in this workshop, just for trying out personal GPTs during it.

The Puzzle-based Learning approach has been applied to several fields of knowledge. In education research papers, the instructional usage of puzzles is considered to improve learners' motivation and engagement and help them to develop critical skills but difficulties concerning learners' interaction with puzzles have also been pointed out. Our paper investigates the dynamics of the concept of a puzzle and its interface to provide a better understanding of its form and functions, and help learners interact with puzzles. We consider Puzzle-based Learning tenets as well as their educational impacts on both critical thinking and learner engagement and provide an original proposal concerning the understanding of puzzles. Our proposal centered on the dynamics of puzzles bears conceptual and educational facets. Conceptually, puzzle dynamics is viewed as composed of two elements: a mechanism, the Puzzle Trigger, and a process, the Puzzle-Solving. From an educational point of view, the rationale for integrating Puzzle Triggers in Puzzle-based Learning is meant to help learners interact with puzzles and consequently become motivated and engaged in the Puzzle-Solving process. This way, learners' critical thinking skills are reinforced and focused on finding solutions to challenges. We illustrate the implementation of Puzzle Triggers and Puzzle-Solving by considering two instructional activities in a Software Development undergraduate course of an online learning Informatics Engineering Program.

Immersive technologies, such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality have gained increasing interest and usage in the field of education. Attention is being paid to their effects on teaching and learning processes, one of which is self-regulation of learning, with an important role in supporting learning success. However, designing and creating immersive environments that support the development of SRL strategies is challenging. Employing a systematic approach, this literature review provides an overview of the uses of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality with the goal of supporting SRL. We map these to known educational uses of immersive environments, highlighting current gaps in these efforts and suggesting pathways for future studies on instructional design of the use of immersive technologies to support self-regulation of learning.

Abstract: An immersive narrative should support immersion of its audience considering three dimensions of immersion (temporal, spatial and emotional). We present and demonstrate a method to evaluate and classify the immersion dimensions and creation techniques for narratives, to support reflections for future changes according to pedagogical objectives. The method was developed as a design science research artefact. It was applied empirically, in the curricular unit “Software Development Laboratory”, which uses narratives for Self-Regulation and Co-Regulation of learning in the Software Engineering program of Universidade Aberta, Portugal (asynchronous online Higher Education). Results expose if we resort to an immersion dimension over others, as detected in topics 2 and 6 of the demonstration (absence of spatial immersion). This analysis is useful, for evaluation and classification of narratives, providing their creators (e.g., teachers and non-expert professionals), with awareness of the immersion techniques and dimensions being applied throughout the narrative, enabling a global vision and reflection, which may inspire interventions to enhance the subjective state of immersion to be developed in the target audience. Resumo: Uma narrativa imersiva deve prover a imersão do público-alvo considerando três dimensões de imersão (temporal, espacial e emocional). Apresentamos a demonstração de um método para avaliar e classificar as dimensões de imersão e técnicas de criação de narrativas, para possibilitar reflexões para alterações futuras, de acordo com os objetivos pedagógicos almejados pelo docente. O método foi desenvolvido como um artefacto de Design Science Research. Foi aplicado empiricamente, numa unidade curricular de Laboratório de Desenvolvimento de Software, que utiliza narrativas para Autorregulação e Corregulação das aprendizagens no curso de Licenciatura de Engenharia Informática da Universidade Aberta de Portugal (Ensino Superior online assíncrono). Os resultados possibilitam verificar se recorremos mais a uma dimensão de imersão e menos a outras, como foi detectado nos tópicos 2 e 6 da demonstração (ausência de imersão espacial). Esta análise é útil para avaliação e classificação de narrativas, para possibilitar seus criadores (e.g., professores e profissionais não especialistas), a tomar consciência de que técnicas e dimensões de imersão estão sendo aplicados ao longo da narrativa, possibilitando uma visão global e reflexão, que pode inspirar intervenções para potenciar o estado subjetivo de imersão a potenciar no público-alvo.