This paper explores the challenges and solutions to the decrease in social interaction in the university environment due to the adoption of online classes. The proposal frames the use of Virtual Reality (VR) for the creation of CollabVR, a social interaction platform. CollabVR is based on a technological architecture oriented towards managing extracurricular activities in VR environments, with the aim of enhancing social interaction among university students. This architecture follows a microservices approach and includes a web application and a VR application. To assess the technological feasibility of CollabVR, a focus group of software architecture experts was organized. The results showed that 66% of them agreed that the proposed architectural diagrams provide a clear and complete representation of the interaction between users, devices, applications, and servers. In addition, 100% o...

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education has accelerated the shift in learning paradigms toward synchronous and asynchronous online approaches, significantly reducing students’ social interactions. This study introduces CollabVR, as a social virtual reality (SVR) platform designed to improve social interaction among remote university students through extracurricular activities (ECAs). Leveraging technologies such as Unity3D for the development of the SVR environment, Photon Unity Networking for real-time participant connection, Oculus Quest 2 for immersive virtual reality experience, and AWS for efficient and scalable system performance, it aims to mitigate this social interaction deficit. The platform was tested using the sociability scale of Kreijns et al., comparing it with traditional online platforms. Results from a focus group in Lima, Peru, with students participating in...