The metaverse and artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly intersecting in educational contexts, yet limited empirical research has examined how generative AI avatars function within socially interactive virtual environments. This study investigates the deployment of generative AI avatars within a socio-educational metaverse environment. Using a developmental evaluation approach, data were collected through interviews with seven institutional stakeholders, teacher-generated reflections, internal documentation, embedded user feedback captured through in-platform reporting tools, and longitudinal field memos across an iterative deployment cycle. Findings indicate that the transition from scripted NPCs to generative AI avatars recalibrated users’ attribution of agency, intensified dialogic unpredictability, and elevated social realism beyond visual fidelity. Voice-mediated interaction emerged as a threshold mechanism for co-presence, while algorithmic improvisation exposed tensions between pedagogical intent and stochastic response generation. The deployment further revealed affective frictions, expectation misalignments, and the mediating role of AI literacy in shaping trust, participation, and interpretive coherence. Overall, the study advances a sociotechnical understanding of AI avatars as co-constructors of meaning and interaction, offering implications for the design, implementation, and governance of future AI-enhanced metaverse learning environments.

As calls to center lived experience in higher education intensify, so too do concerns about the ethical, emotional, and structural risks involved in integrating real-life narratives into pedagogy. This study introduces Simulated Lived Experience (SLE) as a novel pedagogical modality that leverages the immersive affordances of learning environments like the metaverse to approximate systemic conditions of marginalization without reproducing trauma or requiring emotional labor from marginalized individuals. Drawing on critical pedagogy frameworks and affect theory, the research explores how SLE enables learners to engage with ethical discomfort, narrative complexity, and affective dissonance through the enactment of virtual selves. A qualitative design was employed, with data collected via semi-structured interviews from 12 participants who engaged in metaverse-based simulations portraying exclusionary dynamics related to disability, race, and institutional access. Thematic analysis generated four key findings: (1) virtual simulations evoke affective authenticity but also ethical unease, (2) embodied disorientation fosters structural insight, (3) narrative authorship and representation are ethically contested, and (4) discomfort acts as a catalyst for critical reflection. The study concludes that while SLE cannot replace lived experience, it can function as a powerful epistemic mediator when designed collaboratively, approached reflexively, and grounded in epistemic care.

Social interaction has long been a subject of theoretical inquiry in both Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), but seldom has it been examined through the lens of digital embodiment. As the metaverse gains traction as a platform for learning and collaboration, understanding how its affordances construct behavioral engagement demands empirical scrutiny. Thus, this study examines the effects of avatar customization and communication modality on behavioral engagement within a metaverse-based simulation. Using a 2×2 factorial design, participants were randomly assigned to avatar (customized vs. generic) and modality (voice vs. text) conditions, with engagement tracked via a stealth assessment approach across multiple sessions. Findings indicate that avatar customization facilitated broader spatial exploration, while voice-based communication elicited higher interpersonal interaction. Critically, the convergence of both factors produced a compounded effect that yielded selective interaction effects on temporal and social dimensions of engagement. This study contributes a framework of affordance convergence that informs both the theoretical modeling of digital embodiment and the practical design of immersive learning platforms. As educational experiences increasingly unfold within socio-technical systems, the challenge for both HCI and CMC is to design environments where social interaction is both mediated and dynamically co-constructed through the alignment of interactional affordances.

Introduction: As digital platforms increasingly mediate language learning, the challenge is no longer simply how to deliver content online but how to design environments that cultivate authentic multilingual practice. While multilingualism has long been linked to enhanced metalinguistic awareness and domain-general cognitive flexibility, the role of multimodal digital environments in fostering these outcomes remains underexplored. Purpose: Grounded in sociocognitive and multimodal interactionist perspectives, this study examines how a cross-device metaverse platform can support multilingual development through spatially organized, task-based, and avatar-mediated interaction. Specifically, it investigates whether multilingual engagement in language-zoned virtual spaces improves learners' communicative performance, affective engagement, and cognitive control compared to conventional instruction. Methodology: Using a quasi-experimental cluster-assigned pretest-posttest control group design, learners engaged in communicative scenarios across English, Filipino, and Mandarin within language-zoned virtual spaces that cued role-appropriate language use. Data were collected using performance-based role-play assessments (code-switching accuracy, communicative competence), oral fluency measures (WPM), motivation and anxiety questionnaires, and a Stroop interference task to assess cognitive flexibility. Findings: Compared to peers in a control condition, learners in the metaverse environment demonstrated significantly greater gains in code-switching accuracy, spoken fluency, motivational engagement, and cognitive control. Specifically, experimental participants showed improved context-appropriate language selection and reduced cross-language interference when shifting between English, Filipino, and Mandarin during task-based role-play scenarios. They also produced more fluent spoken output and demonstrated stronger communicative competence ratings in completing real-world interaction tasks. In addition, learners reported higher motivational engagement and cognitive results, further revealing improvements in inhibitory control and attentional regulation. Collectively, these outcomes suggest that spatially cued multilingual interaction in the metaverse supports integrated gains in linguistic performance and executive functioning. Originality/Value: This study provides empirical evidence that multilingual development is shaped not only by linguistic input but by how digital learning ecologies choreograph spatial, social, and multimodal cues into context-responsive language use. By operationalizing multilingual interaction through spatial language zoning, avatar-mediated tasks, and AI-supported multilingual dialogue, the study positions the metaverse as a semiotically rich pedagogical ecology that can simultaneously foster code-switching competence, oral fluency, motivational engagement, and domain-general executive control. The findings advance multimodal multilingual education theory by demonstrating how context-sensitive interaction design can generate co-emergent communicative, affective, and cognitive benefits in multilingual learners.

This study sought to understand the experiences of All-but-Dissertation (ABD) students that led them to withdraw from a Doctor of Information Technology (DIT) programme. A total of 27 students from three Philippine universities were interviewed using a semi-structured format. Results show that most participants were driven by extrinsic motivations and viewed graduate education as a pathway to a better life. The challenges they faced were both internal and external in nature (e.g. study-work conflicts and personal problems), which are comparable to those in other disciplines. Most reasons (e.g. limited research experience and dissertation anxiety) for dropping out from this professional doctorate align with findings from studies on Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) programmes. However, two reasons unique to ABD students in the DIT programme were the inclusion of software development and the selection of computing research topics. Overall, these findings provide empirical evidence for addressing issues related to dissertation delays, prolonged doctoral completion times, and attrition in graduate education. Practical and managerial implications derived from this study could inform graduate school policies and practices, with potential applications across other doctoral disciplines.