The Virtual Presence Pedagogy (VPP): A sistematic review of foundational elementes in immersive digital ecosystems (2023- 2025)

The emerging digital ecosystem, centered on the Metaverse, promises profound transformations in education, moving from transmissive learning to deeply immersive, collaborative, and personalized experiences. This transition requires a new pedagogical framework that manages socio-technological and ethical challenges. Although traditional theories define presence as physical, recent research extends it to virtual environments through multisensory interactions. Thus, an integrative discipline that defines and optimizes authentic human presence in these augmented spaces is lacking.

Using the PRISMA 2020 protocol, this study conducted a systematic review based on OpenAlex data (period 2023-2025), identifying 132 relevant records. Bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer confirmed that emerging pedagogical transformation is strongly related to cutting-edge fields, especially Computer Science, Virtual Reality and Psychology.

Based on this synthesis, the research proposes "Virtual Presence Pedagogy" (VPP) as a fundamental discipline, which redefines the notion of human presence in education by expanding it into three complementary dimensions: cognitive presence, social presence and identity presence.

We conclude that VPP will represent an appropriate methodology for creating an integrated educational ecosystem, transforming the Metaverse from a digital space into a pedagogy of augmented proximity, essential for the 21st century skills formation.