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Article History

Received: 4 July 2025

Accepted: 7 April 2026

First Online: 20 April 2026

Competing interests

: The authors declare no competing interests.

: Ethical review and formal approval were not required for this study (“Validation of the PEPCII Pedagogical Design Model via Telepresence Robot Use in Higher Education”), in accordance with applicable institutional guidelines and national legislation, and in line with the Estonian Code of Conduct for Research Integrity. The study was conducted in an educational context involving voluntary adult participants and did not include the collection of sensitive or personally identifiable data. This exemption from formal ethical review was confirmed at the institutional level by the Director of the IT College, Tallinn University of Technology. All procedures performed in this study were in accordance with established ethical standards for research involving human participants and complied with the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679.

: Informed consent was obtained from all participants included in the study. Participation was voluntary, and participants were informed about the purpose of the study, the nature of their involvement, their right to withdraw at any time without consequences, and the use of anonymised data for research and publication purposes. For focus group interviews, informed consent was obtained verbally prior to the start of audio recording. Participants were informed about recording procedures, data processing, and confidentiality measures, and recording commenced only after consent was obtained. For written responses collected via online questionnaires, participants were provided with an introductory explanation of the study and data handling procedures. Submission of the questionnaire was considered as informed consent. All data were anonymised during transcription, and no identifying information was retained. Data were stored securely and accessed only by the research team.