To the Infinity and Beyond: Foundations and Methods for Engineering Socio-Technical Educational Metaverse

The increasing interest in the metaverse has positioned immersive virtual environments as a promising paradigm for social interaction, collabora- tion, and education. By integrating technologies such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and distributed infrastructures, the metaverse en- ables more engaging and interactive digital learning experiences beyond the limitations of conventional online platforms. However, despite exten- sive exploration, existing research and development efforts often priori- tize technological novelty over systematic design, evaluation, and long- term sustainability, resulting in fragmented solutions that insufficiently address social, ethical, and organizational concerns. As a consequence, although the literature increasingly acknowledges a wide range of socio- technical challenges — privacy, security, inclusiveness, governance, and mental health — most studies remain largely conceptual or predominantly technology-centric. This gap is particularly evident in educational set- tings, where enabling technologies are frequently proposed without clear guidance on how they should be systematically integrated, governed, and empirically evaluated within real learning environments. This dissertation addresses these limitations by framing the metaverse as a socio-technical system and introducing metaverse engineering as a struc- tured, engineering-oriented approach to the design and development of metaverse environments, with education adopted as a meaningful context of application. This thesis pursues three main objectives: (i) to systemat- ically characterize the socio-technical issues and enabling technologies shaping the metaverse landscape; (ii) to define a coherent engineering process that integrates these issues into the lifecycle of metaverse systems; and (iii) to operationalize and empirically evaluate this process within the educational domain. The work combines systematic literature analyses, conceptual frame- works, and empirical studies. It proposes structured taxonomies and a xi metaverse engineering roadmap, which are validated through the design and implementation of SENEM, an engineered educational metaverse. The empirical evidence shows that the proposed approach supports the sys- tematic integration of enabling technologies such as blockchain and artifi- cial intelligence, while making socio-technical concerns explicit, manage- able, and empirically observable. As a key contribution, this dissertation provides a theoretical foundation, an engineering-oriented framework, and empirical evidence for the design, development, and assessment of responsible, sustainable, and evaluable educational metaverse systems.