Future of Education with the Metaverse

How education in the metaverse can help improve learning

Temidayo Omoniyi
Game of Life
7 min readNov 22, 2022

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For a long time, the Metaverse has been the focus of attention for educators. This became popular with social media giant Facebook’s announcement and rebranding as Meta.

Physical learning has always ruled the classroom for both students and educators everywhere. After the pandemic, digital learning took off and expanded to most institutions, replacing the conventional learning model with one more focused on technology.

What is the Metaverse

The metaverse is the integrated network of 3D virtual worlds, a virtual-reality space in which users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users.

Users can create their own avatars, customize them, and use them to carry out real-world tasks in the Metaverse. This provides a brilliant way to interact virtually with one another all over the world. Anyone can use their web browser to log in to a virtual world and engage in a face-to-face communication by donning a virtual reality headset.

Companies Educating in the Metaverse

According to data from the Metaverse Insider, the list is companies that employ the use of metaverse for educational purposes.

The Sandbox Metaverse

The popularity of the metaverse has seen companies like Sandbox and others on the rise. Sandbox is a virtual environment on the Ethereum blockchain where users may create, control and sell their game experiences using SAND, a platform utility token.

The Sandbox ecosystem is beginning to shift its focus to education, to give specialists, educators, and others a tool to assist others in learning how to make games.

Immerse

Immerse currently have a partnership with META to reimagine learning in the Metaverse, with the motto of breaking down barriers to human connection. Immerse company is a virtual language experience platform that uses virtual reality technology to teach language. The program offers immersive language learning through VR. even though the idea began in the slum of Syria in 2017, Immerse is fast becoming the number one to teach languages in the Metaverse.

VRAcademi

The VRAcademi is the first of its kind, a digital learning platform that focuses on developing virtual reality and creative design among young adults and kids. The VRAcademi aim of stimulating innovation and cross-fertilization between educational institutions and the industry platform enables users to produce virtual reality content, such as movies, 3D games, artwork, and designs. The academy allows students to come up with their own creative designs and try out new things themselves.

Axon Park

Axon Park is a first-of-its-kind and highly ranked among most educational institutes, this Axon Park provides you with a virtual environment where you can create your own academic campus. This is aimed to defy the barriers of distance and space through a virtual campus built to engage and inspire. It is a platform currently being adopted by many top academic institutions all over the world. The platform takes pleasure in connecting students and educators online and removing barriers to learning. The platform also lets you make money off the virtual campus through a passive income from course registrations.

Gatherverse

Gatherverse is a group of like-minded individuals who meet up to discuss Metaverse, mind you this is not a digital virtual environment. Gatherverse is more of an ecosystem where communities come together to talk about the future of web3 and other relevant technology.

Tools that Support Learning in the Metaverse

The metaverse being an external reality needs certain tools to allow easy interaction between the virtual world and humans.

Virtual Reality (VR)

Users (students) can connect and participate in a virtual environment thanks to a virtual reality headset. Virtual Reality has gone from just being a gaming device to catapult the next generation of internet learning, with the full screen on head display, teachers are assured to have the full and undivided attention of their students. This experience employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Headsets like Oculus and HTC VIVE can allow users to shrink down and explore the human body from the inside.

Augmented Reality (AR)

Augmented Reality uses information in real-time that incorporates text, pictures, music, and other virtual additions with physical objects. Using a tablet or smartphone to overlay digital content over the real environment. Examples are the Pokémon Go or Snapchat filters.

Augmented reality has been found to increase student engagement and interest by creating a medium to express their innermost selves. They can contribute to the curriculum, build virtual worlds, and discover new hobbies thanks to AR technologies.

MIXED REALITY (MR)

Mixed Reality provides students with the experience of both the Physical and Virtual. Mixed reality cuts down emotional barriers so that kids can view the world from fresh angles By using this immersive technology, you may provide a collaborative environment for students and provide them access to previously inaccessible activities, which the conventional education system never provides.

Benefits of the metaverse in Education

In reference to a blog post written by LeewayHertz the metaverse provides numerous possibilities and advantages for the future generation in terms of learning.

Thorough Education

Ever since the outbreak of Covid-19, more digital means of education have been sought after. The metaverse provides students with a 3D imaginative world where they can see and interact with their classmates and the 3D things around them, exactly as in a traditional classroom. The metaverse also provides students with a better historical feeling by virtually transporting them to different eras, as seen in the Meta advert.

Practical Application

By allowing students to participate in hands-on activities that would otherwise be deemed dangerous and challenging in the real-world environment, the metaverse is changing traditional education methods. To better prepare them for real-life efforts, it helps students better understand theories and hone their talents. Students can perform intricate procedures or risky explosive experiments within a metaverse without endangering anyone’s life.

Life-Based Education

Students are encouraged to engage with their surroundings and peers through the natural ecosystems provided by metaverse classrooms. In a metaverse, teachers can engage students in various real-world situations where they can engage in activities and then reflect by themselves on what they have learned.

Accessibility

The metaverse has been shown to have the potential to increase people with disability’s access to social and educational opportunities. The use of VR apps reduces worry and feeling of being overwhelmed as individuals can practice skills.

Accelerated Learning

The metaverse provides a real-life experience that encourages students to find learning more exciting and engaging. The gamification, engaging hands-on exercises, 3D features, and entertaining activities in the metaverse can keep learners one step ahead. Additionally, because 3D simulations entirely captivate a person’s gaze and attention, metaverse learners have less distraction as they can better understand the subject material.

Increase Data Capture

Organizations can gather previously untapped data to obtain insights into student behavior to measure progress, discover gaps, and continuously improve the learning experience by using the metaverse to build immersive learning experiences.

Key Takeaway

Even though the metaverse is still in its early stage, the technology will continue to grow, which has seen big firms like Facebook change to Meta. Leading companies and brands have already begun investing in several metaverse projects due to it.

One leading player in the area of the metaverse has to be Sandbox, with a massive community where developers can earn money via blockchain-based games and voxel assets, with a marketplace where you tend to buy numerous NFT-related projects.

Reference

https://blog.gameoflife.co/

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Temidayo Omoniyi
Game of Life

Cloud Data Engineer • Solutions Architect • Analytics Engineer • Azure Administrator • Power Platform Developer • MCT• YouTuber • Author Ex Manager • GCP • AWS