Moderated mediating effect of professor-student interaction on the relationship between learning presence, learning flow, and learning satisfaction in metaverse-based practical classes for airline service major students

Introduction. The advancement of digital communication has driven demand for virtualized services across sectors such as gaming, education, and business, consequently propelling the growth of the metaverse industry. Metaverse-based learning environments play a crucial role in education by influencing learner and instructor motivation. By simulating virtual laboratories and real-world scenarios, the metaverse enhances educational quality through interactive experiences. This study focuses on aviation service majors, investigating how metaverse technologies impact learning outcomes and student satisfaction. It underscores the need for empirical insights and theoretical frameworks to better understand professor-student interactions within these contexts and optimize educational practices. KEYWORDS Methods. The participants in this study were 137 airline service major students from four universities. Data were collected from freshmen (31.4%), sophomores (38.0%), juniors (29.2%), and seniors (1.5%) students majoring in airline service. This study used SPSS Win.21.0 statistics programs to conduct the frequency test, reliability and correlation tests. For the moderated mediation analysis, ‘Model 14 of PROCESS macro ver.4.0’ was used as the statistical method. Results. Professor-student interaction was found to have conditional indirect effects on the relationship between learning presence and learning satisfaction through learning flow that were significant (p < .01) when the professor student interaction values were .0000 (.0302~.2912) and .1161 (.0844~.3865), respectively. Therefore, the moderated mediation effect of resilience was verified. Conclusions. This study found that airline service major students with high professor-student interaction have increased learning flow. The results of this study indicate that students’ professor-student interaction should be fostered and reinforced with the goal of increasing improving metaverse’ learning presence and increasing their learning flow.