Designing Immersive Learning Experiences: Teaching Robotics Programming in Virtual 3D Environments

This article presents a teaching scenario using virtual environments, often referred to as part of the ‘metaverse’, to address educational challenges highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic. The increasing shift to online learning environments emphasizes the need for flexible, anytime-anywhere access to education. Virtual 3D environments offer a level of immersion that surpasses traditional online formats, such as video conferencing, and enable innovative didactic concepts, including collaborative group activities. To illustrate these benefits, we showcase a case study involving the simulation of robot programming within a virtual 3D environment. Additionally, the integration of personal assistants, such as conversational or pedagogical agents, is explored as a means to alleviate teachers' workloads. Advances in artificial intelligence have made natural language interactions with these agents highly effective, further enhancing the potential of virtual 3D environments in educational contexts. Keywords: e-learning, e-teaching, immersion, virtual 3D rooms, gamification, cyber-physical systems