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The Syrian refugee crisis is too big and complex for any single country to mount an adequate response. Mitigating the human tragedy, deciphering its root causes, and developing sustainable solutions require effective international collaboration. To teach collaboration of this kind to university students, researchers in the US, UK, and Lebanon used accessible communication technology in development of a Virtual Exchange in Global Health, connecting students in medical and allied health fields. Through a problem-based learning curriculum, students from Cardiff Metropolitan University in Wales and the Modern University for Business and Science in Beirut worked collaboratively to conduct desktop research on the crisis and develop a protocol to interview camp residents about the public health issues affecting them. Students in Beirut then conducted interviews and gathered 360-degree video footage of conditions in the camp, which students in the UK studied using low-cost Virtual Reality (VR) viewers. Student feedback provided preliminary indications that the problem-based learning methodology, including the immersive VR experience, contributed to the participating students’ intrinsic motivation to study the problem. The students collaborated in dividing and distributing tasks as well as in engaging with each other in a Joint Problem Space, and began to build relationships outside class, relationships that will serve them well as practicing professionals in the field of global health. These outcomes create warrant for further development of the program and suggest possibilities for deployment of this high impact model for teaching in other fields where complex problems require international collaboration.

The purpose of this study is to investigate visual comprehension in memory for 360-degree video advertisements amongst adolescents under single and repeated viewing conditions.

This study explored visual comprehension in memory for 360-degree video advertisements using the theoretical assumptions of the social psychology theory of social information processing by Wyer (2003). The authors conducted two experiments over a timeline of three months. In the first experiment, participants watched the 360-degree video advertisement once, and after one week, the same set of participants watched the same advertisement again. The theoretical assumptions in the comprehension unit were used to design the experiments and to explore visual comprehension in memory for 360-degree video advertisements. The data were collected using surveys and interviews through an experimental research design approach. NVivo software was used to analyse the data.

This study found that while female participants were able to comprehend colours in the visuals better, male participants were better able to comprehend facial expressions presented in the visuals. Further, both female and male participants were able to comprehend locations within the advertisement visuals. It was found that participants understood the plot or the story of the advertisement better after the second viewing than after the first viewing.

The two main contributions from this study are as follows: from a theoretical perspective, the application of a social psychology theory for the advertising sector enables us to gather more insights about the social cognition stages of a human mindset such as information retrieval, judgement, decision making, goal stimulation and short- and long-term memory. In doing so, this study not only explored adolescents' visual comprehension memory of 360-degree video advertisements, but it also contributed to the theory of social information processing by Wyer (2003) by exploring consumer visual comprehension memory. From a practical perspective, the findings of this study provide a solid foundation for future advertising firms or agencies, marketers, and salespeople on how to design effective advertisements using 360-degree video versions in a way that appeals to consumer visual memory.

This paper can be considered as amongst the first studies which combine social psychology with advertising to investigate visual comprehension memory for 360-degree video advertisements amongst adolescents.

The purpose of this study is to describe an educational virtual reality (VR) photo-based tour used in an online course and investigate the influence of immersive capability on the dimensions of spatial presence and their relationship with learning-related variables.

The study employs a descriptive and an experimental methodological approach. The research objectives were achieved using a two-group (n1 = 29 and n2 = 30) experiment, employing descriptive statistics, t-test and correlation analysis.

The t-test revealed that the immersive capability had a significant effect on the sense of physical space (SP) , Engagement (EN) and negative effects (NE) dimensions. Correlations between the dimensions of spatial presence were found to confirm reports from the literature. Furthermore, some of the dimensions were found to be correlated with motivational and learning variables.

The study reported the results of a one-off experiment among 59 participants. While the results were promising, a longitudinal qualitative study could confirm the results in an actual distance learning context.

The study confirmed that adding VR photo-based tours as learning activities may enhance the learning experience of distance learners.

The study shared a case of a learning activity that can be employed for flexible education. Virtual tours can support the need for context-based learning that the geographical or political constraints may limit.

While the paper confirms previous reports on the benefits of using VR photo-based tours as learning activities, this paper has empirically shown the relationship between the dimensions of spatial presence and immersive capability in this specialized context.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate undergraduate student perceptions about the application of immersive technologies for enhancing the student learning experience. This study assesses the viewpoints of students from varying multidisciplinary backgrounds about whether immersive technologies can enhance their learning experience and increase their level of engagement in the context of higher educational delivery.

The research used a case study methodology adopting a questionnaire-based research mixed methods approach. In total, 83 participants completed the questionnaire. The purpose of the research was to evaluate and interpret students’ perspectives at higher educational level about the use of immersive technologies towards enhancing their learning experience. There was also a focus on remote educational delivery due to the legacy of COVID-19.

The findings suggest that there is still more empirical work to be undertaken regarding the application of immersive technologies in higher education. The study revealed that there are immersive benefits though preference for face-to-face teaching remains popular. The negative connotations associated with immersive technology use in higher education, (e.g. virtual reality), such as cost of equipment and motion sickness, substantiates the themes identified in the academic literature.

The study explores a diversity of immersive technologies and their application in higher education (HE) contexts. Findings indicate that although there are acknowledged pedagogical benefits of immersive technology use in HE prevalent barriers remain that require further empirical research if immersive technology use is to be universally used in the sector.

Purpose: This study links SDG goal 9 of industry, innovation strategies and another infrastructural environment to branding relating to destination and interactive marketing. Digital marketing tools with various applications aim to offer hi-tech services to customers in interactive marketing services, namely multiple goods and services, data and innovative techniques in the tourism and travel sector. Exploring the study would add to the existing literature supporting interactive marketing procedures and destination branding. Branding relating to destinations fosters tourists around the globe facilitating economic growth and development and supporting the local economies.

Need for the Study: It is observed from the literature that very few studies have been identified across the globe from various researchers on the interactive marketing and destination branding that ensures brand loyalty and reassesses the intent of the tourists just before the epidemic pandemic in the form of COVID-19. Artificial Intelligence, as part of information technology, offers various interactive marketing services in the form of different social media marketing strategies, attractive websites for tourists and travel providers and image building on destination branding. This study would help fill the marketing gap, which results in branding relating to destination, brand loyalty and reassessing the intent of various tours and travel plans just before the pandemic.

Methodology: The study focused on the literature, demonstrating the stimulus organism methodology and examining the impact of potential marketing strategy, which is interactive focusing on the destination branding, loyalty relating to the brand and also procedures to revert with the intent that would motivate and facilitate the customer’s confidence showering the loyalty relating to the brand in the travel and tourism sector.

Findings and their Practical Implications: The study revealed that the marketing relating to interactive methodologies in the hi-tech digital approaches ought to be carried out to create opportunities for prospective tourists willing to get information about various tourists destinations with the help of various marketing techniques such as different social media applications, easy access of websites for accessing the tourist destinations and relevant information, accessing images pertinent to the tourism destinations with the ease of chat box and providing suitable audios and video sources to the potential customers.

This study aims to investigate the implications, risks and challenges of data privacy due to the use of immersive technology in the hospitality industry.

The authors adopt a mixed-method approach. Study 1 is a focus group. The authors then provide external and ecological validity with a field experiment conducted with 139 hotel clients at a three-star continental European hotel.

Collecting biometric data results in unbalanced privacy compared to biographic data, as it diminishes individuals’ control over their data and grants organizations absolute power. This unbalanced privacy directly influences consumers’ willingness to disclose information, affecting their choice of hotels and access to services.

Hotels should redesign their strategies to accommodate heightened privacy risks with biometric data. This can be obtained by introducing systems that foster customer confidence in data usage and facilitate customers’ willingness to disclose biometrics through immersive technology or biographic data.

This study introduces unbalanced privacy as a unique state due to sharing biometric data. The authors propose a novel doctrine, the uncontrollable privacy paradox, which is a shift from the privacy paradox. The uncontrollable privacy paradox addresses the unbalanced privacy envisaged through consumer powerlessness in data management. This research addresses the literature gap on the privacy paradox by offering a broader perspective, including business, industry and mixed reality considerations.

This paper aims to evaluate the impact of various preview modes on tourist attitudes and intentions to visit a destination based on consumers’ level of involvement in travel decision-making.

The study was conducted as a between-subjects one-factor [preview mode: static images vs 360-degree tour vs virtual reality (VR) mode] in a laboratory experiment setup to examine how consumers with different levels of involvement in travel decision-making respond to destination marketing toward three different preview modes.

The findings indicated that VR preview mode highly influences tourist attitudes and visit intentions toward a destination compared to static images and 360-degree tours. This effect is more significant among participants with higher levels of customer involvement. Finally, the results from the study offer empirical evidence of the effectiveness of VR in shaping user behavior compared to traditional preview modes.

The limitations are using a non-probability sampling method, a small sample size and affordable mobile-compatible VR headsets.

This study offers empirical evidence on the effectiveness of VR in shaping tourist behavior compared to traditional preview modes. It helps destination marketers develop appropriate strategies for promoting tourist destinations.

The novelty of this paper lies in understanding the effectiveness of VR in shaping tourist behavior with different levels of customer involvement in travel decision-making.

This preliminary study aims to examine the use of a co-designed immersive virtual reality intervention programme in improving access to health care for people with intellectual disability.

A co-production approach was used to design a virtual reality intervention in collaboration with people with intellectual disability, their families and carers. A mixed-method single sample pre-test-post-test design examined using a virtual reality intervention simulating health-care environments to improve access of attending health-care appointments. Qualitative feedback was used to understand participants’ experience and opinions of using the digital technology.

The study found that the intervention did help people access health-care appointment and reduced their fear. Improvements were also found in quality-of-life post intervention. Positive feedback was provided from participants on using digital technologies indicating the novelty of the approach and potential further applications.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study which has used virtual reality to support people with intellectual disability access health care.

This chapter reports on research that explores new and emerging extended reality [XR] technologies and how they might provide opportunities to trial, investigate, and put into practice their potential to reverse processes of atomisation, polarisation, and intercultural discomfort, in our contemporary society. This transdisciplinary practice-led research was underpinned by disciplines of computer science and engineering, social sciences, history, diverse community economics, human ecology, and Indigenous psychology. The collaboration between these various disciplines with the Māori and non-Māori community members allowed researchers to understand current societal stressors, prioritise relationality, and explore our shared values in the creation of XR experiences for exhibition in the galleries, libraries, archives, and museums [GLAM] sector.

A discursive design framework motivated, inspired, provoked, persuaded, and reminded inspiring collaborators, and visitors to the exhibitions, the value of (re)connecting with people and overcoming interracial awkwardness through these curated experiences. The XR technologies provided women a platform to discuss and reimagine first encounters between people from different cultural backgrounds. The technologies included a 180° stereoscopic projection, Common Sense, in which Māori Elder Irene Hancy shared her insight about social engagement and haptic HONGI in which visitors were greeted by a Māori woman Tania Remana via augmented reality. This research has been motivated by a desire to promote and support intercultural understanding in Aotearoa New Zealand, and it extends research by other non-Māori and Māori scholars.