Virtual Travel and Learning. Challenges and Perspectives for an Extended Pedagogy

The evolution of digital technologies and the spread of the internet have given rise to new experiential modes of travel, including virtual travel. This is an important area of research within the broader field of “travel pedagogy” (Raccagni, 2025). While virtual travel offers opportunities for knowledge and discovery, it is characterised by an absence of direct physical experience — a fundamental element of embodied and situated learning (Lo Presti, 2016). This limits sensory and contextual interaction with the environment and others, affecting the depth and evocative power of the experience. Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge that the technological tools that facilitate virtual travel can enhance distributed learning when integrated into complex socio-technical networks. From this perspective, virtual “tourism” goes beyond simulating real environments to take on a world-making function, generating new relationships, encounters, and hybrid realities that transcend the traditional distinction between online and offline dimensions (Gerosa & Milano, 2011). This pedagogical configuration challenges isolationist paradigms of cognition and learning by proposing metadisciplinary reflection on the implications of co-evolutionary learning. This places dynamic human–technical artefact interaction at the foundation of an extended pedagogy (Kilteni et al., 2012).