Education in the Metaverse
- Charles Shewell
- Jun 10, 2022
- 3 min read
Could This Be The Future of Education?
Picturing the Future
Think about the movie Free Guy that came out in 2021, where Ryan Reynolds plays a character in a game. Think of a world where that game is what real life truly looks like. Not the chaos and random people doing outlandish things, but the tech that brings immersive interactive virtual reality into actual reality. For those having not seen this particular film, maybe you have seen Iron Man or any other Marvel film with the character Tony Stark. I’m talking about the scenes when he is building something such as his iron suits using virtual computer tech and artificial intelligence. Films such as these offer a glimpse of what the future could look like where virtual or augmented reality intersects with real life, and quite possibly, or in my opinion, quite realistically how education could look in the near future.
What is the Metaverse?
Sydney Butler, a PC technician and educator pursuing his Ph. D., is studying the effects of modern virtual reality and describes the metaverse “turns today's internet into a place where you can live in an embodied way using immersive technologies such as virtual reality,” Butler (2022). Think of the metaverse as coexisting realities that are linked together through cloud computing that is placed strategically within education. Students enter their geography class where they sit at a smart desk that is basically a touch screen table. They slip on a VR headset and now see a three dimensional map of the polar ice cap melting and its effects. Here the student can interact with the timeline and reposition their viewpoint. To a degree, tech like this has already been introduced into society through film, where you are given opportunities to choose the actions taken after a given point that will change the outcome of the film. For example, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is an interactive film on Netflix.
Classroom Augmentation
Mixed reality classrooms may be the future of education. With augmented reality games already being created where you can pull out your mobile device and open the app, the tech is at our fingertips now. Think of games such as Pokemon Go, where users were out searching for pokemon characters placed at locations in reality. Tools and tech like this can be used for educational purposes within the classroom. A mixed reality classroom could bring a more interactive element to learners, thereby engaging the students in a way traditional learning cannot, especially for auditory and visual learners.
Virtual Hurdles
The biggest issue with this technology at the moment is expense. The financial burden it would place on a school to house everything needed in order to have tech running with a low latency is extremely high at the moment. With more companies building competitive technology, we would see a decline in pricing, but for now, that time is not here. The other main setback for the time being is latency and compatibility. 5G capabilities help, but with each student essentially being logged in to a single network could slow the interactions within the reality. Picture a virtual meeting where everything is lagging by a couple seconds. It would also take a variety of tech and software to work together.
Positive Realities
E-Learning within the metaverse has the opportunity to enhance the learned material through interaction, therefore enhancing the experience and possibly helping educators track and measure the performance of students in real time, allowing for more thorough and in depth teaching. There is also a social aspect brought into the classroom where students could interact with each other within the augmented reality, to help form positive relationships with their peers, albeit through an avatar.
Links for my inspiration behind this post are below:
Works Cited
Butler, Sydney(2022 May 31) “What is the Metaverse and Why Should You Care?”, https://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/what-is-the-metaverse-and-why-should-you-care
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