Knowledge-Graph-Driven Mind Mapping for Immersive Collaborative Learning: A Pilot Study in Edu-Metaverse

One of the promises of edu-metaverse is its ability to provide a virtual environment that enables us to engage in learning activities that are similar to or on par with reality. The digital enhancements introduced in a virtual environment contribute to our increased expectations of novel learning experiences. However, despite its promising outcomes, there appears to be limited adoption of the edu-metaverse for practical learning at this time. We believe this can be attributed to the fact that there is a lack of investigation into learners' behavior given a social learning environment. This lack of investigation is critical, as without behavioral insight, it hinders the development of education material and the direction of an edu-metaverse. Upon completing our work with the pilot user studies, we provide the following insights: 1) compared to Zoom, a typical video conferencing and remote collaboration platform, learners in the edu-metaverse demonstrate heightened involvement in learning activities, particularly when drawing mind mapping aided by the embedded knowledge graph, and this copresence significantly boosts learner engagement and collaborative contribution to the learning tasks; and 2) the interaction and learning activity design within the edu-metaverse, especially concerning the use of MM.