Exploring Immersive Student Meetings in the Metaverse: Experiential Learning and Emergent Group Entitativity

We describe a novel course design that utilizes the Metaverse as a learning and research environment to explore immersive meetings using virtual reality (VR) headsets. In this course, students were randomly assigned to zero-history groups to investigate attendee experiences, group participation, and emergent group entitativity as a key factor for interaction behavior in the Metaverse. They gained hands-on experience with VR technology, insights into the opportunities and challenges for group collaboration, and analyzed interaction dynamics based on other teams’ observed immersive meeting. Our preliminary findings provide descriptive information on team members’ meeting satisfaction, individual VR experiences (i.e., avatar perception, simulator sickness, and task load) as well as self-reported and observed group entitativity. We discuss the opportunities and challenges of the Metaverse for teaching about group dynamics specifically and enabling immersive learning scenarios more generally. Crossing disciplinary bridges by integrating research on Human–Computer Interaction, group dynamics, and workplace meetings contributes to a better scientific understanding on how the Metaverse and emerging technologies can shape educational programs. We close with an outlook for future research, focusing on inclusion, familiarization, and engagement as key goals of designing learning experiences in the Metaverse.