When Metaverse Meets Education, How Will Education Change?

Metaverse is a digital landscape that lets people connect through the virtual environments they can build. It is a brilliant way of interacting virtually with others all over the world using a virtual reality headset or by logging in to a virtual space. Perhaps the best way to define Metaverse is to see it as a virtual recreation of the real world that can be customized as per specific needs.

These can be anything from a virtual school sports arena to military scenario recreation for training purposes. It is the future of the Internet and the way the world will communicate, do business, provide better healthcare, or impart training in any sector. Think of movies like The Matrix or Player One; Metaverse is here to offer its users super-immersive experiences for anything that we want in the virtual world.

Immersive experiences possess the ability to make digital interactions feel more human. The immense possibilities of the Metaverse have naturally opened the question as to how education will change under its influence.

Here are some of the consequences of the powerful application of the Metaverse for learning and education.

1) Hands-On Virtual Learning Experiences

Metaverse addresses one of the most pressing questions in the education industry – how to provide a hands-on learning experience to students? This is where the interactive world with Virtual Reality (VR) steps in to overcome the constraints of traditional teaching methods. Virtual Reality learning experiences have the ability to surpass the tell-and-test, passive, click-through methods that we know lack engagement and efficacy. In contrast, Metaverse helps create highly interactive, dynamic, and often emotionally realistic content that can reach users in a meaningful way.

Learning in the Metaverse lets learners across the world connect, empowering them to interact in meaningful ways. This form of learning is sure to be more interactive and impactful by simulating everything – from a mere conversation to complicated surgery. Think of a virtual classroom full of students from different geographic locations eager to learn about history. A teacher is a person who has a traveling lifestyle, continuously visiting new places to gather newer historical knowledge.

Metaverse helps bring together these remotely situated students and their teachers, giving them a vivid experience of the historical details of different times and places through the Metaverse VR prism. Students engage directly in a 3D immersive environment making the learning more realistic than ever, closer to living in those places, through the historical events! No more boring lectures or 2D images to support them. The first-person learning experiences make learning more exciting and unforgettable through the Metaverse.

2) Teaching And Learning In The Metaverse

Teaching and learning in the Metaverse are a reality already. The game Roblox, for example, allows anyone to build and share their virtual worlds much like Fortnite, and Minecraft. Roblox virtual learning experiences are examples of the educational potential of Metaverses. These virtual learning experiences can take place in millions of user-generated worlds, where students log in at home via their devices rather than at school.

Roblox classrooms have private servers for educators and their students where classes can take place in real-world or Metaverse scenarios.  Students can sit in the computer lab of their school and all log into the same world along with their teacher. The teacher might use the Metaverse reality to show a historical landmark through the computer monitors, while the actual communication with the students takes place in the real world. Metaverse learning for students can be based on physical simulations of maintaining safety in the virtual environment or role-playing simulations in medicine, the military, or other training.

3) Global Learning Environment

Metaverse brings down the walls of conventional classrooms with students from any part of the globe participating and interacting together in the immersive 3D learning experience. As Metaverse is designed to mimic the physical space, students can share this space with peers from other lands much as they would in traditional classes. When used to its full potential, Metaverse will open up the opportunity to impart homogenous world-class education across countries irrespective of their geographic locations.

4) Metaverse Learning Environment Potential

The virtual reality of Metaverse will let students “visit” places from the past, take part in dangerous experiments, explore inaccessible terrains, and do so much more! Any Metaverse learning environment can be designed to look realistic. This is sure to help students imbibe newer materials better in handling quantum models that can be otherwise difficult to comprehend. With Metaverse, anything can be replicated to bring immersion into the virtual environment to a whole new level.  

Metaverse learning is not just immersive but also offers a realistic feel to it. Virtual reality headsets and controllers are designed to feel natural and can replicate hands and fingers while the student is wearing the gear! Subsequently, educators can design learning experiences that can synchronize hand movements. Once students come out of the virtual world and back into the real world, they’ll have their muscle memory in place, allowing them to relive learned experiences.

5) Future Possibilities

The best part about Metaverse is that we are yet to realize its full potential leaving plenty of room for educators and students to explore learning experiences that have always been a dream. Fully immersive virtual schools offering hands-on global learning opportunities will surely change the framework of education in the future. When supported correctly, the learning landscape will change forever with Metaverse becoming the mainstream method of imparting education. 

Concluding It All

The Metaverse digital landscape is still in its infancy, and we are yet to explore its full potential. It has surely opened up the possibility of a virtual world where any type of hands-on learning is possible. With the ability to go anywhere and do anything from the comfort of the school chairs or home desk, the Metaverse is soon going to be the answer to global education at its best. 

Metaverse learning environments can take part in promoting safety in a way that real-world teaching has often failed. In the Metaverse, educators will have complete control over student interactions, letting them limit bullying. In case of disciplinary issues, they can simply change a few permissions in the virtual space to bring the situation under control. All of these will help students to focus on learning instead of worrying about other distractions.

The world of Metaverse is powered by AI. High-quality, accurately annotated data is the gasoline for AI algorithms to work flawlessly. At EnFuse, we are excited about the endless possibilities of Metaverse in education. With our expertise in data and the education sector, we look forward to making a positive impact in the meta world.