Exploring Learners’ Perceptions and Writing Performance in a Metaverse-Based PBL L2 Writing Course

The study explored learners’ perceptions and writing performance in an academic course where the researcher leveraged a Problem-Based Learning(PBL) approach and a Metaverse platform. The international students who participated in this study completed three major academic essays, one of which was to resolve authentic problems in which they were situated. In the process of writing, the students produced a variety of written documents, including multiple writing drafts, reflection notes on their learning experience, and a final comprehensive reflection. The researcher analyzed these data to investigate learners’ perceptions and performance in the course. The results showed that the students pointed out the advantages of the metaverse platform, such as interactivity, engagement, convenience, useful functions, and feedback in learning, as they learned critical thinking and problem-solving skills via PBL writing. In addition, the comparison of the writing tasks revealed differences in writing genres, organization, and syntactic complexity.