Identifying Factor Associations Emerging from an Academic Metaverse Event for Scholars in a Postpandemic World: Social Presence and Technology Self-Efficacy in Gather.Town

COVID-19 has prompted conferences to transition to online formats, inadvertently diminishing their emphasis on the social element. In online events, a sense of presence leading to a sense of companionship is limited in conventional conferencing platforms. Although the extant body of research on virtual conferences is growing, academic events in the Metaverse get little attention. Such events and their relevance to social presence within the Metaverse and associations among observable factors are seldom discussed. This study examined the perspectives of scholars in an online seminar during COVID-19 hosted in Gather.Town, a Metaverse-like conferencing environment. A hypothetical model was built to determine whether social presence and technology self-efficacy impact scholars' satisfaction and facilitate academic interactions. Ninety-three scholars in an academic seminar for research projects in information and computer education were polled to obtain data, which was then evaluated using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The proposed model explained 57.1 percent of the variables, and the findings showed that social presence and technology self-efficacy had a positive and significant impact on academic interactions and exchanges, as well as technology self-efficacy playing an essential role in determining overall satisfaction. However, social presence does not appear to have a direct impact on satisfaction, implying that a positive academic experience may still be achieved with or without the feature of being with others supported by the Metaverse. Although digital communication will only become more diverse and intense, it is important to understand how to maintain the basic character of human interactions virtually, even amid a pandemic. This research attempts to shed light on some critical factors in creating a conducive environment for future Metaverse-like academic events.