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The average daily amount of physical activity (PA) expended by children in summer camp is unknown. The purpose of this study was to investigate the trends in PA and sedentary behavior in school-aged summer campers during an outdoor adventure summer camp. Participants were a convenience sample of school-aged children (N = 183; 102 males and 81 females; mean age = 9.69 ± 1.47 years) who attended one week of an outdoor adventure summer camp. PA and sedentary behavior were assessed and collected via wrist-worn Actigraph GT3X+ accelerometers during camp hours, from 9am to 4pm daily. Outcome variables included percentage of time spent in sedentary behavior, percentage of time spent in moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA), and average steps per day. Data were analyzed using a Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) test. Results indicated a decreasing trend of PA across the eight-week summer camp period. Both boys and girls engaged in MVPA for about 9% of the total time during weeks one and two, which decreased to about 7% of the total time by weeks seven and eight. Sedentary behavior remained constant, with an increase during weeks 5 and 6 of camp. Average daily step count decreased by about 3,000 steps per day from the first to the final week of camp. There was a significant main effect for sex on PA (Wilk's [lambda]= 0.000, F = 6.77, p < 0.05) and a significant main effect for week on PA (Wilk's [lambda] = 0.000, F = 3.05, p < 0.05). This indicates the influence of camper sex and week of attendance on PA variables. Overall, weekly PA decreased during the duration of the summer camp. Seasonal outdoor weather patterns and counselor teaching styles may have impacted PA levels of campers. It is recommended that camp staff implement strategies to encourage consistent levels of PA across the summer camp season.

Social-emotional deficits in school-aged children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) greatly hinder these children from fully participating in various school activities in the inclusive education setting. Previous studies have demonstrated evidence regarding the effectiveness of using virtual reality (VR) for enhancing the children's affective expression and social reciprocity. However, considering the technical and logistical complexity of the enabling hardware and software systems, how such approaches can be effectively and sustainably delivered in the school setting remains underexplored. This paper presents a study that utilised VR headsets to enhance affective expression and social reciprocity for children with ASD and explored how the approach could be effectively and sustainably delivered at schools. A total of eight VR learning scenarios were designed based on Kolb's experiential learning framework. 176 children aged 6-12 with a clinical diagnosis of ASD participated in the study. The statistical analyses showed that the participants who received the intervention significantly improved in affective expression and social reciprocity, compared to those who were in the control group. Moreover, the approaches to enhance long-term sustainability have also been presented and discussed in this paper.

One of the promises of edu-metaverse is its ability to provide a virtual environment that enables us to engage in learning activities that are similar to or on par with reality. The digital enhancements introduced in a virtual environment contribute to our increased expectations of novel learning experiences. However, despite its promising outcomes, there appears to be limited adoption of the edu-metaverse for practical learning at this time. We believe this can be attributed to the fact that there is a lack of investigation into learners' behavior given a social learning environment. This lack of investigation is critical, as without behavioral insight, it hinders the development of education material and the direction of an edu-metaverse. Upon completing our work with the pilot user studies, we provide the following insights: 1) compared to Zoom, a typical video conferencing and remote collaboration platform, learners in the edu-metaverse demonstrate heightened involvement in learning activities, particularly when drawing mind mapping aided by the embedded knowledge graph, and this copresence significantly boosts learner engagement and collaborative contribution to the learning tasks; and 2) the interaction and learning activity design within the edu-metaverse, especially concerning the use of MM.

Computer-supported collaborative learning aims to use information technologies to support collaborative knowledge construction by practicing the relevant pedagogical approaches, especially in the distance learning setting. The enabling technologies are fast advancing, and the need for solutions during the COVID-19 global pandemic led to the emergence of the Edu-Metaverse, which is conceptualized as a collection of networked virtual worlds (i.e., the Metaverse) for learning. There is a great necessity to investigate how these more recent enabling technologies can support collaborative learning. This empirical study aims to collect both quantitative and qualitative results to fill the knowledge gaps. Specifically, 20 undergraduate students (three females and 17 males) taking the Game Design and Development course voluntarily participated in this study. The participants used three representative collaboration platforms (i.e., AltSpace, Gather, and ZOOM) in our laboratory for discussing three course-specific topics, simulating the undertaking of collaborative learning tasks in the distance learning setting. The results suggest that the participants were more engaged in the learning activities using the Metaverse platforms that offer avatar-mediated communications and collaborations (i.e., AltSpace and Gather). These platforms also gave the participants a stronger sense of copresence and belonging to the learning community. Potential improvements to the usability and the participants' feedback are also discussed in the article. We hope the results can contribute to the fast-growing use of the Metaverse-enabling technologies for educational purposes.