Investigating the role Augmented Virtuality has in assessing collaboration in educational environments

This paper presents research on the role of Augmented Virtuality (AV) within collaborative educational environments. While AV remains a rather underexplored dimension in the Virtuality-Reality Continuum, this study lays the groundwork for its pedagogical integration, investigating how real-world data can enhance collaborative learning and offer valuable insights into students’ collaborative interactions. The paper provides a background on current approaches to collaborative learning, particularly assessing collaboration to understand interactions, indicators and behaviours that indicate a possible degree of collaboration between students. The paper describes the iterative experimental studies conducted, aimed at assessing learners’ states during learning activities, which played a key role in refining the initial requirements for the proposed framework, design and development of the system. The key results from the validation experiments with students and consultation with teaching practitioners are presented. The results from validation experiments showed a positive correlation between students’ perceived collaboration levels and those calculated by the algorithm developed, indicating the potential for the framework proposed to promote student self-awareness and potentially more enhanced collaborative interactions. The scope of this study is to contribute as an intersection of AV technologies and education, providing a foundation for educational practitioners to create collaborative environments enriched by AV technologies.

© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.