The Metaverse is a concept that was already created 30 years ago by fiction novel author Neal Stephenson (Momtaz, 2022). For a long time, the Metaverse received only a limited amount of public attention, until large technology companies such as Facebook and Microsoft started to invest heavily in this futuristic technology (Brown, 2021). Simply put the Metaverse is a virtual world which enables people to use avatars (digital human which can be freely created) to take part in social and economics interactions (Lee et al., 2021; Momtaz, 2022).
Many popular examples of today’s Metaverse are in the context of gaming and simple social exchanges within the Metaverse. However, it is proposed that the Metaverse in combination with VR technology could also be used to significantly enhance the way today’s education is done (Ragav et al., 2022). According to (Suh & Ahn, 2022), the use of the Metaverse in an educational setting can actually have beneficial effects on the performance of students. So how could the Metaverse for educational purposes look like?
As the Metaverse enables the creation of virtual worlds, education gets unique possibilities to let the students discover and experience topics in a more realistic way. Ragav et al., (2022) propose to combine the metaverse with virtual reality (VR) technology to let students actively engage with topics which are currently only demonstrated using books and short 2-D videos. Image a history lesson where you really dive into the past and can learn about the time as if you are there. You can experience historic events and be immersed into the historic world in a way that is not possible using traditional teaching techniques (Ragav et al., 2022). Next to experiencing historic events, this technology can also help teachers and students to experience realistic scenarios which are normally very complex and therefore difficult to grasp for students or simply not within budget for the school (Jensen & Forbes Technology Council, 2022; Ragav et al., 2022). The metaverse opens up the possibility to conduct for example physics and chemistry experiments, which are too dangerous in real life (Jensen & Forbes Technology Council, 2022). So how realistic is it?
In my opinion and looking back at my own time at school with many complex concepts which were difficult to understand using a book and short videos, I see a large potential of using the Metaverse for educational purposes. A higher engagement always enabled me to better understand the topics that were discussed. However, I just think that the technology is not quite there yet. First, the required technology to create a Metaverse as well as VR technology is just still not realistic for the public schools yet. It is too complex and especially expensive to implement. Second, looking at the high hesitation with which schools implement digital technology, I assume the Metaverse will fare even worse than common technology such as laptops and tablets. Nonetheless, I am positive that the Metaverse and combining it with VR devices will be an important step in the future to bring education and teaching quality to the next level – of course effective strategies have to be formulized specifically for this new technology.
What do you think? Is the use of the Metaverse and VR technology a step into the right direction when it comes to education? Will it increase the overall quality of our educational systems?
References
Brown, D. (2021, August 30). What is the ‘metaverse’? Facebook says it’s the future of the Internet. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/08/30/what-is-the-metaverse/
Jensen, M., & Forbes Technology Council. (2022, August 24). The Accessibility And Affordability Of The Metaverse In Education Right Now. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/08/24/the-accessibility-and-affordability-of-the-metaverse-in-education-right-now/?sh=6eae95017f8f
Lee, L.-H., Braud, T., Zhou, P., Wang, L., Xu, D., Lin, Z., Kumar, A., Bermejo, C., & Hui, P. (2021). All One Needs to Know about Metaverse: A Complete Survey on Technological Singularity, Virtual Ecosystem, and Research Agenda. http://arxiv.org/abs/2110.05352
Momtaz, P. P. (2022). Some Very Simple Economics of Web3 and the Metaverse. FinTech, 1(3), 225–234. https://doi.org/10.3390/fintech1030018
Ragav, A., Noen, K., Lindahl, M., & Dohler, M. (2022, August 17). Metaverse education: from university to metaversity. https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2022/8/metaverse-education-from-university-to-metaversity
Suh, W., & Ahn, S. (2022). Utilizing the Metaverse for Learner-Centered Constructivist Education in the Post-Pandemic Era: An Analysis of Elementary School Students. Journal of Intelligence, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence10010017
First of all interesting topic, education is in my opinion one of the main industries where emerging technologies can really make a positive difference for society, also considering its labor shortages. I would like to get your opinion on the educational part of this story. I agree that in some parts of education it might provide a benefit for children. However, don’t you think it will become more of a ‘fun experience’ than really learning something about it like we do in our current system? I think it really takes a lot of time, discipline and attention before you can turn a virtual world into a learning experience, not saying it is impossible but the real face-to-face will in my opinion have the greatest value.
Interested in your opinion on this.