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.