Educational institutions orchestrate a variety of in-school events and activities to enrich the student experience. Given their benefits, it is crucial to encourage student participation. With the recent advent of the metaverse, there is an opportunity to engage students due to their inclination toward adopting such technologies. However, the dynamics of celebrating school events within these virtual worlds remain largely unexplored. Our study sought to address this gap by examining school event celebrations in the metaverse through an appreciative inquiry approach. During Valentine's Day, we introduced a special edition of our educational metaverse (i.e., MILES Virtual World) tailored to celebrate the occasion. We discovered that conducting school events in the metaverse requires the integration of real-life social rituals to augment students' social experiences and foster a sense of community. Moreover, the need for realism and the mirroring of real-world traditions in virtual settings emerged as critical drivers for creating more emotionally satisfying and engaging user experiences. The challenge of encouraging student participation in physical events parallels the issue encountered in virtual worlds, where students may feel discouraged from participating if they do not observe their friends' presence within the metaverse. Our study also calls for collective engagement in shaping the virtual world to ensure more inclusive, engaging, and enriched educational metaverses. As we continue to navigate the evolving landscape of immersive digital environments, the insights gained from our research underscore the importance of collaboration, innovation, and student agency in shaping the future of education.

Immersive technologies have generated significant interest across various academic disciplines. The necessity for more authentic, interactive, and immersive artificial environments led to the growing popularity of the metaverse. Unfortunately, not all metaverse types have been broadly covered in educational research. This inadequacy highlights a gap in understanding the potential benefits and drawbacks of metaverse technologies for education. To address this research gap, we created a metaverse called "MILES Virtual World"that embodies the concepts of lifelogging and mirror worlds. Following the principles of the Embodied Social Presence Theory, the application allows students to socialize through customizable avatars and engage in a variety of activities that closely resemble those in the physical world. We adopted a mixed-method approach using a convergent parallel design to evaluate the application. Our quantitative analysis reveals that students feel highly present and engaged in the virtual environment, with a sense of agency and immersion. It also underscores the importance of enhancing embodiment and copresence to create more effective virtual world experiences and opportunities for social interactions. Meanwhile, our qualitative analysis uncovers several underlying subthemes, including avatar customization, identity exploration, virtual items, communication, entertainment, autonomy, freedom of expression, realism, challenges, shared experiences, and a sense of belonging within the metaverse. Overall, our study provides valuable insights into the potential of metaverse technology in the educational context, and how it can be harnessed to create more effective and engaging academic experiences for students.

The emergence of the metaverse has expanded the vital role of virtual worlds in education. It extends the traditional configuration of virtual spaces by offering a more immersive, interactive, and social experience. Unfortunately, there is insufficient literature on how to develop a metaverse application aligned with academic standards and best practices. In this study, we adopted a co-design approach in remodeling our mobile educational metaverse to draw a blueprint for existing and future metaverse technology adopters. We sent a follow-up survey to stakeholders inviting free-text comments. This survey focused on the challenges, issues, and expected features from the perspectives of developers, teachers, and students, respectively. Our results revealed several challenges that developers face when building a metaverse, such as technical infrastructure, student engagement, avatar customization, and performance optimization. Meanwhile, teachers emphasized potential issues that may arise from the use of metaverse technology in educational settings, such as learning outcomes, health and safety, digital citizenship, and ethics and morality. Finally, students expected several key features of an educational metaverse application, such as socialization and collaboration, virtual world interactions, metaverse optimization, realistic graphics, and minigames and activities. The implications of these findings are significant and can help other educational institutions seeking to integrate metaverse technology into their academic services. Overall, our study presents an initial foundation for further exploration and advancement within the rapidly evolving field of metaverse technology.

Advances in technology have revolutionized student recruitment strategies employed by educational institutions. These innovations led to the adoption of virtual campus tours to provide prospective students with an immersive expedition into the school facilities replicated in a digital environment. However, the existing virtual tour technologies pose challenges, including cybersickness in virtual reality and limited interactivity in 360-degree videos. In this study, we fill these research gaps by developing a playable and interactive campus virtual tour where potential enrollees can visit and tour the campuses remotely. In addition to a series of beta tests with enrolled students, we recruited students specializing in game development and their associates to evaluate the application using an extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) framework. In this evaluation, we found that the application was well-received by prospective students and was regarded as useful in delivering an immersive campus visit experience. From the TAM perspective, it was evident that there was a significant difference in how enrolled and potential students assess the application in terms of perceived usefulness and behavioral intention. The positive acceptance of the application led to the recommendation of playable campus virtual tours as a tool for improving student recruitment strategies.

The project endeavored to design and develop a Web-based Performance Evaluation System with integration of rule-based algorithm that will analyze the performance of each reviewee based on the scores from their examination. The algorithm automatically provides suggested reading materials based on the result of the assessment. With this, the system will help the reviewees assess their own performance. The system was developed using Agile Methodology Model of Software Development. The software produced was tested using Alpha and Beta software tastings. The FURPS model was used to assess the software quality as perceived by the selected group of respondents. The system was found to be functional, meeting the designed functional requirements specifications.