Multimedia Tools and Applications - Call for Papers: Metaverse and E-Learning Platforms [1240]
Summary and Scope
The concept of Metaverse relies on the idea of a persistent, virtual, three-dimensional universe where people from all around the world can interact, socialize, and work toward common goals. The advances in fields like virtual/augmented reality, software engineering, and artificial intelligence, the availability of computational resources, along with the rise of social distancing due to COVID19, have further accelerated a technological transition toward the Metaverse, especially when people need to develop their skills and personality via learning, engagement, and socialization.
Education represents a unique use case: the Metaverse would not limit itself to the presentation of an exact digital replication of the surrounding educational world, but can also empower it under multiple perspectives, by providing new learning instruments, support for learning on hard-to-create scenarios, realistic online learning experiences, and lowered physical, geographic, and economic barriers for students with disabilities, low socioeconomic status or from rural areas.
In such a context, multiple and heterogeneous types of multimedia tools and applications, like immersive technologies such Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, are Mixed Reality, are key to engage with the Education Metaverse and build the next generation of social connection and collaboration. Designing, engineering, and experimenting novel tools and applications are key challenges to make learning experience effective and make a successful use of the Metaverse. Perhaps more importantly, keeping into account the ethical and governance concerns while developing these new tools and applications represent additional issues to address.
The special issue on "Metaverse and E-Learning Platforms" will seek high quality submissions of papers describing original, unpublished results revolving around the design, engineering, and experimentation of multimedia tools and applications able to make the Educational Metaverse usable, accessible, and secure. The special issue addresses some key challenges covered by the Springer's Multimedia Tools and Applications Journal such as those connected to education and training, computer-aided instruction, distance and interactive training, and case studies of multimedia applications.
The special issue will be open, i.e., it will not be related to any conference. The guest editors will carefully look at the papers before letting them enter the review process: they will verify that they contain a substantial contribution to the themes of interest. As such, the guest editors reserve the right to recommend desk-rejections due to limited (additional) contribution.
The topics of the submissions should be of direct interest to researchers, practitioners, and industries targeting the broad theme of tools and applications for the Metaverse and e-learning platforms. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
● Controlled Experiments on Virtual Reality and Educational Theories
● Theory-driven guidelines for designing metaverse-based educational experiences
● Modern educational paradigms and trends supported by e-learning platforms
● Engineering approach of the metaverse tailored to educational purposes
● Multimedia applications to improve interactions of educators and learners
● Metaverse’s data integrity
● AR/VR based e-learning platforms ensuring data privacy and security
● Game-design elements for AR/VR based e-learning platforms
● Artificial Intelligence and blockchain technologies in the contexts of the metaverse for education
● Legal aspects
Important Dates
• June 1, 2023: Opening of the submission procedure
• September 30, 2023: Full paper submission deadline
• December 31, 2023: Authors notification
• February 28, 2024: Author’s revision
• March 31, 2024: Authors notification of minor revisions
• April 30, 2023: Author’s revision
• May 15, 2024: Final notifications
Guest Editors:
Fabio Palomba - Associate Professor, University of Salerno
Email: fpalomba@unisa.it
Maurizio Sibilio - Professor, University of Salerno
Email: msibilio@unisa.it
Fabio Narducci - Associate Professor, University of Salerno
Email: fnarducci@unisa.it
Submission Guidelines
Authors should prepare their manuscript according to the Instructions for Authors available from the Multimedia Tools and Applications website (this opens in a new tab). Authors should submit through the online submission site at https://www.editorialmanager.com/mtap/default.aspx (this opens in a new tab) and select “Metaverse and E-Learning Platforms” when they reach the “Article Type” step in the submission process. Submitted papers should present original, unpublished work, relevant to the topics of the special issue. Submitted papers should present original, unpublished work, relevant to the topics of the special issue. All submitted papers will be evaluated on the basis of relevance, significance of contribution, technical quality, scholarship, and quality of presentation, by at least three independent reviewers. It is the policy of the journal that no submission, or substantially overlapping submission, be published or be under review at another journal or conference at any time during the review process. Final decisions on all papers are made by the Editor in Chief.