Security, Ethics and Privacy Issues in the Remote Extended Reality for Education

The adoption of Extended Reality (XR), an umbrella term for augmented, virtual, and mixed reality, has grown over the last few years. But this adoption has been accelerated with the impact of the pandemic, which has demonstrated the value of this technology as future of learning technology. As a result, XR is becoming a popular solution to facilitate remote learning, remote conferences, and remote working. To mitigate the problems of remote learning, a trend is emerging among authorities to emphasize the potential for new technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual, augmented, or mixed reality to create engagement, providing a kinesthetic aspect of learning and addressing students’ attention problems. XR with wearable devices can make the learning process more productive and even more interesting. Despite the fact that remote learning with XR offers several interesting educational advantages as compared to in-person classroom environments, it has its own downsides that have not been addressed in previous research and considerable research gaps remain in this area. When these devices are used in public places, they can infringe on other people’s rights as well. As for security concerns, the more we live our lives online and virtually, the more vulnerable we can become to hackers. These privacy and security risks include input and output data, user interaction data, and identification of both the user and devices. This chapter addresses these ethics, security, and privacy-related issues in line with XR in education. In the broader view, this chapter will focus on a better understanding of the human value of XR for learning purposes in the remote setting with responsible design.