Enhancing Secondary Students’ Self-Efficacy through Virtual World-Based Learning

[music] Hello everyone and welcome to the 500 to 5:30 p.m. session of the 2025 Open Simulator Community Conference. In this session we are pleased to introduce the presentation enhancing secondary students self-efficacy through virtual world-based learning. Our speaker is Mary Magdalene. Maria Magdalena is an educational technologist dedicated to transforming learning through immersive virtual worlds. Her expertise lies in designing interactive and engaging learning experiences that empower both students and educators. Through her work in metaverse development, she conceptualizes virtual classrooms, simulations, and learning environments that foster collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and real world problem solving. Please check out the website found at conference.org org for speaker bios, details of the sessions, and the full schedule of events. This session is being live streamed and recorded. So, if you have questions or comments during the session, you may send tweets toopensimc with the hashtagpoundc. Welcome everyone. Let's begin the session. Okay, thank you. OK, eh I'm Maria Magdalena and eh Marcel Storyteller is my avatar at the open sim eh conference. Uh, I used to know as Marcel Moswood in SL. OK, I will start my presentation. This presentation examines how virtual work environments can enhance self-efficacy among secondary school students. Okay. It provides a synthesis of findings from a study conducted using two liquid scale surveys administered at the beginning and at the end of the academic year. To maintain conciseness, the presentation does not report the survey results item by item. Instead, it focuses directly on the consolidated findings, conclusions and implications derived from the study. Let's take a look at Banduras for key sources of self-efficacy. Number one, mastery experiences. This is the strongest source when individuals successfully complete attacks on their self-efficacy increase. Repeated failure especially early on can lower it. Number two vicarious experiences observing someone similar to oneself succeed can boost one's own belief that I can do it too. This is especially relevant in learning environments. Number three, social persuasion. Encouragement, constructive feedback and verbal support from others can strengthen self-efficacy as long as the persuader is credible. Number four, physiological and affective states. Stress, anxiety, or negative emotions tend to reduce self-efficacy, calmness, positive mood and feeling physically capable tend to increase it. OK, let's start with topic one. Eh, topic number one. is eh where we start to eh explore the survey results and also we analyze the survey results using the panduras theory. OK topic number one immersive environment as a safe experimental space virtual words provide learners with a heightened sense of presence and a simulated environment. where they can engage in tax without real physical or social risk. Within this protected space, students are free to explore, attempt new strategies, make mistakes, and retry without the fear of judgment from peers or instructors. Such conditions directly enhance mastery experiences which Badura identifies as the most influential fact in shaping self-efficacy. By allowing repeated cycles of trial, error and refinement, the virtual environment supports the gradual development of competence and confidence. From a design perspective learning activities should deliberately foreground incremental success and emphasize the pedagogical value of failure. Instead of prioritizing the final outcome, the activity should develop learners through stages where each attempt is successful or does not contribute to cognitive growth, resilience and stronger sense of capability. Topic number two, modeling and social presence. Teachers and peers avatars function as virtual role models who demonstrate problem solving strategies in real time. Thereby strength strengthening vicarious experiences that enhance self-efficacy through the observation of others a successful performance. Research in virtual world indicates that social interactions between avatars in collaboration increase social self-efficacy by approximately 25 to 30% compared to traditional learning sets. To maximize this benefit the platform will be optimized for observational collaboration including features such as session replay for modeling enabling learners to review and replicate effective behavior within authentic context. Topic number three, feedback and emotional reinforcement. Game system in virtual words provides real time personalized feedback such as page teacher avatar praise or success triggered visual effects that function as a form of verbal persuasion to strengthen learner perceived competence. Studies on VR gamification confirm that such contextualized feedback enhances intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy. Yielding increases increase in approximately 15 or up to 20% on complex tax. A key design consideration is the personalization of feedback based on individual performance data avoiding generic point based rewards in order to develop and cultivate an authentic sense of competence. OK, topic four, emotional regulation and psychological safety. Because self-efficacy is strongly influenced by emotional states, the virtual world learning environment must ensure changes in social and psychological safety. Such an environment should be free from ridicule social anxiety and feelings of inferiority that may arise through interactions with other avatars. Ensuring this safety requires the implementation of avatar behavior moderation system and antibuling protocols and structure opportunities for emotional reflection such as digital wellbeing sessions. Research in virtual world mental health environment indicates that these protective measures can enhance emotional regulation and emotional self-efficacy by up to 22% particularly for vulnerable learners. Effective implementation may include AI driven sentiment monitoring and schedule virtual wellbeing bricks design to maintain emotional balance and support sustain and engagement in learning activities. Topic number five project based learning or PBL design. Virtual world environments are highly conducive to project based learning enabling students to construct authentic large scale projects such as virtual sustainable cities or digital historical museums. This immersive design process fosters a strong sense of competence, autonomy and ownership over learning outcomes by engaging students in iterative creation and problem solving cycles. Empirical studies on PBL conducted within VR and virtual world platforms demonstrate that the authenticity and real world relevance of such text can increase student self-efficacy by approximately 28 28%. To maximize this benefit the project should be designed to remain authentically connected to real life context and open to personal exploration. Additionally, incorporating flexible pathways and portfolio based assessment ensures that students can tailor their learning experiences while maintaining alignment with circular curricular goals sorry. OK, topic number six is ​​personalization and differentiation. Personalized learning within virtual world enables avatars, environments and challenges to be tailored to students' learning styles, basic needs and individual interests such as customization support learners in developing their abilities according to their unique strengths. AI based adaptive learning system further enhances this process by dynamically adjusting difficulty and challenge type based on real time performance data. Research on personalized VR learning environments shows that adaptive pathways can increase individual self-efficacy by up to 35%. To optimize these outcomes, virtual work platforms should integrate robust AI analytic capable of continuously recalibrating learning demands, ensuring that each student progress at an appropriately challenging and personally meaningful level. Topic number seven, transfer to the real world. It is essential to ensure that gains in self-efficacy are developed within virtual words are meaningfully transferred to real world context. This can be facilitated through structured reflection, hybrid project portfolios and guided briefing sessions that explicitly connect virtual experience to practical application. Evidence from VR transfer studies shows that such an approach can increase post intervention self-efficacy retention by up to 40%. To support this process, its virtual world learning model should conclude with a self-assessment activity design to bridge virtual and real world skills complement by hybrid mentoring to strengthen the generalization of competencies beyond the digits. Implications for educational practice. The results suggest three implications. Number one, immersive environments should be structured to encourage iteration and save failure as this directly strengthens mystery experience. Number two, avatar mediated modeling and social presence features should be intentionally designed as they play a substantial role in shaping collaborative confidence. Number three, reflection and guided briefing are essential to ensure that gains in virtual self-efficacy are not confined to the digital environment but translate into broader academic confidence. OK, studies provide empirical and conceptual evidence that virtual word based learning is not merely a technological novelty but a robust pedagogical approach capable of strengthening students' belief in their ability to succeed. School increasingly explores immersive technologies. This research offers a foundation of designing intentional self-efficacy oriented virtual learning ecosystem. That's all for my presentation. If you would like to chat more or dive deeper into the topic, feel free to reach out through my work email. Thanks for your attention. Thank you, Marcel, for such a wonderful session. And [laughs] as a reminder to our audience, you will want to check out the conference. Well, by the way, if there are any questions, you can certainly put them in the chat log, but you want to check out the conference.org to see what's coming up next. And hey, it is entitled our OSCC 2025 closing with thanks to everyone and the conference photo. Come join us and be in the conference photo. After the closing, we will have at 6 p.m. the Ethereal 11 Dream Pop Rave 2025 closing dance on Digs at Pirates at all. As noted in the schedule, staying open throughout the year, we invite you to visit the OSCC 25 poster Expo in the OSCC Expo 3 regions to find accompanying information on our presenters, their presentations, and explore the Hypergrid Tour resources in OSCC Expo 2 region along with our sponsors and our crowdfunder boots located throughout all of the OSCC. Expo regions. Thank you again to Maria and to the audience.