Immersive Environments in Higher Education: the Digital Well-Being Perspective.

In less than half a century, digital environments have pervaded nearly all aspects of our lives. Presently, the importance of Immersive Environments (IE) in education is rapidly increasing, offering interesting new opportunities for learning in higher education, but at the same time presenting some risks related to their use. In particular, the IE pose some issues to be considered in terms of digital well-being, such as access and inclusion, cognitive overload, and physiological discomfort. Furthermore, it has to be considered that there is a lack of a general methodology and a theoretical grounded approach for the implementation and evaluation of IE for educational purposes. The main aspects to be considered for their impact on the digital well-being have been collected from the current literature and analysed, exploring 4 main dimensions: cognitive, physiological, social and educational. Based upon the findings a first set of guidelines on digital well-being for IE in education have been developed leading to the production of a learning scenario that has been evaluated, by several stakeholders. The results of this evaluation process are positive, underlining the compliance of the learning scenario with the digital well-being requirements for an effective IE integration in the educational context.