Proceedings of the SAFAR Scientific Conference 2026 – Building Awareness through Immersive Learning (SSC-BAIL 2026)
SAFAR Scientific Conference 2026 – Building Awareness through Immersive Learning (SSC-BAIL 2026)
📍Žilina, Slovakia🗓️ 16 September 2026
Conference Name: SAFAR Scientific Conference 2026 – Building Awareness through Immersive Learning (SSC-BAIL 2026)
Date: 16 September 2026
Location: Žilina, Slovakia (Offline)
Website: https://saf-ar.com These proceedings present the papers accepted for the SAFAR Scientific Conference 2026, Building Awareness through Immersive Learning, held on 16 September 2026 at the CEIT building of the University of Žilina in Žilina, Slovakia. The conference was organised within the Erasmus+ project SAFAR, and it is a pleasure for me, on behalf of the University of Žilina, to introduce the volume that resulted from it. The theme of the conference reflects a shift already underway in how we prepare people for demanding and often hazardous work and improve their situational awareness. Knowledge alone has never been sufficient in any field where competence has to be demonstrated under real conditions, whether in clinical practice, industrial safety, technical operations, crisis management or emergency response. What decides the outcome is rarely what a person knows, but whether they can recognise a developing situation, judge it correctly and act under pressure, and these are competences that traditional instruction can describe but cannot easily build. Virtual, augmented and mixed reality, simulation-based training and serious games offer educators something that was previously out of reach: an environment in which learners make consequential decisions, fail safely, and try again. Integrating such technologies into education and training is therefore not a matter of modernising our teaching tools, but of improving the quality of the decisions people will make in practice. Realising that potential responsibly requires evidence. Immersive environments are attractive, and their attractiveness is too easily mistaken for effectiveness. No single institution can generate that evidence alone, nor should it try. The challenges addressed here are shared across Europe, as are the standards and regulatory expectations that shape professional training, and international cooperation is what allows findings obtained in one national context to be tested, adapted and validated in another. This conference is itself a product of such cooperation. It brings together partners, authors and reviewers from several countries and disciplines whose willingness to share data, methods and honest criticism gives the event its scientific value. The University of Žilina regards participation in these networks as a core part of its mission rather than an addition to it. The contributions gathered in this volume span virtual, augmented and mixed reality applications, simulation-based training and serious games, artificial intelligence in education, situational awareness and decision support, and crisis management training. In total 26 submissions were received, of which 16 were accepted. Together they examine learning outcomes and methodological foundations as well as technical possibilities, and in doing so they help move immersive learning from promising practice towards established practice. I would like to thank the authors for entrusting their work to this forum, the reviewers for the care they invested in improving it, and the members of the scientific and organising committees for the effort that lies behind a single day of programme. My thanks also go to the European Union for the support provided through the Erasmus+ programme, which made both the SAFAR project and this conference possible. I hope the reader will find in these pages not only results but also questions worth pursuing, and I wish the SAFAR community continued collaborations that outlast this event. Katarína Hollá
Vice-Rector for International Relations and Marketing September 2026
Date: 16 September 2026
Location: Žilina, Slovakia (Offline)
Website: https://saf-ar.com These proceedings present the papers accepted for the SAFAR Scientific Conference 2026, Building Awareness through Immersive Learning, held on 16 September 2026 at the CEIT building of the University of Žilina in Žilina, Slovakia. The conference was organised within the Erasmus+ project SAFAR, and it is a pleasure for me, on behalf of the University of Žilina, to introduce the volume that resulted from it. The theme of the conference reflects a shift already underway in how we prepare people for demanding and often hazardous work and improve their situational awareness. Knowledge alone has never been sufficient in any field where competence has to be demonstrated under real conditions, whether in clinical practice, industrial safety, technical operations, crisis management or emergency response. What decides the outcome is rarely what a person knows, but whether they can recognise a developing situation, judge it correctly and act under pressure, and these are competences that traditional instruction can describe but cannot easily build. Virtual, augmented and mixed reality, simulation-based training and serious games offer educators something that was previously out of reach: an environment in which learners make consequential decisions, fail safely, and try again. Integrating such technologies into education and training is therefore not a matter of modernising our teaching tools, but of improving the quality of the decisions people will make in practice. Realising that potential responsibly requires evidence. Immersive environments are attractive, and their attractiveness is too easily mistaken for effectiveness. No single institution can generate that evidence alone, nor should it try. The challenges addressed here are shared across Europe, as are the standards and regulatory expectations that shape professional training, and international cooperation is what allows findings obtained in one national context to be tested, adapted and validated in another. This conference is itself a product of such cooperation. It brings together partners, authors and reviewers from several countries and disciplines whose willingness to share data, methods and honest criticism gives the event its scientific value. The University of Žilina regards participation in these networks as a core part of its mission rather than an addition to it. The contributions gathered in this volume span virtual, augmented and mixed reality applications, simulation-based training and serious games, artificial intelligence in education, situational awareness and decision support, and crisis management training. In total 26 submissions were received, of which 16 were accepted. Together they examine learning outcomes and methodological foundations as well as technical possibilities, and in doing so they help move immersive learning from promising practice towards established practice. I would like to thank the authors for entrusting their work to this forum, the reviewers for the care they invested in improving it, and the members of the scientific and organising committees for the effort that lies behind a single day of programme. My thanks also go to the European Union for the support provided through the Erasmus+ programme, which made both the SAFAR project and this conference possible. I hope the reader will find in these pages not only results but also questions worth pursuing, and I wish the SAFAR community continued collaborations that outlast this event. Katarína Hollá
Vice-Rector for International Relations and Marketing September 2026