## 4 Discussion  
### Learning Outcomes: Perceptions vs. Actual Performance and the Effect of Collaboration  
The results of the study indicated that learners' academic performance improved after playing the escape room, a finding that aligns with previous research [26; 29; 30; 32; 39], underscoring the potential for an interactive and playful environment to lead to positive learning outcomes. These improvements were overall evident across both conditions, suggesting that regardless of whether learners worked individually or collaboratively, the Metaverse VRER experience positively impacted their performance. On the other hand, the mode of collaboration did not have an impact on learning outcomes, as there was no difference in pre- and post-test scores between pairs working remotely and those working face-to-face. These outcomes hold considerable relevance, given that this is one of the first attempts at integrating virtual reality with EFL education in the context of an educational escape room. The positive results from both conditions suggest that teachers could implement Metaverse VRERs as supplementary tools to cater to different learner preferences, thereby personalising instruction and enhancing learning outcomes. Moreover, the adaptability of VRERs means they can be used in both face-to-face and online learning environments, offering flexibility for teachers dealing with varied classroom settings or remote teaching scenarios. Learners' positive perceptions of their learning effectiveness also agree with previous findings [25; 30; 32; 37; 38; 42], highlighting the fact that they consider Meteverse VR educational escape rooms to be an effective teaching and learning method. It is important to note that their perceptions of their learning also reflected their actual performance, further reinforcing the validity of the escape room as an effective educational tool. In general, participants found the learning activities meaningful, while the interactive, game-based approach provided opportunities for practical application, which learners identified as beneficial for acquiring the target vocabulary. Moreover, the study's results showed that learners' perceived cognitive benefits also improved, supporting the notion that educational escape rooms can enhance cognitive engagement [40] by fostering problem-solving and critical thinking skills in an authentic, low-stress environment. The escape room can, therefore, also prove to be an opportunity for meaningful learning, which occurs when learners can transfer their new knowledge to new situations [61]. Thus, the positive effects of the VRER on both perceived and actual learning outcomes emphasise its value as an effective method for EFL teaching and learning. However, when it comes to comparing the results of the two groups, namely collaborative and non-collaborative, which was the initial aim of this study, things become less clear. Learners who played the escape room in pairs seemed to do better in the post-test than those who played individually. Nonetheless, there was no statistically significant difference in learners' improvement between the two groups. This contradictory finding can be explained by taking into account the small sample size of the study. Having only twenty participants means that even a slight difference in post-test scores, such as the one found here (4), could show up as significant, but the improvement might be harder to distinguish statistically due to improvement scores being relatively close between participants in the two groups. In addition to that, despite perceptions of learning effectiveness and cognitive benefits being higher in learners who worked collaboratively, the differences are still not significant enough to be able to conclude with certainty that the collaborative condition is more effective.