Today’s technological advances make people’s lives easier. In addition, during the COVID-19 pandemic, people had to move into the digital world because all activities that required physical contact were stopped to prevent the spread of the virus. This change heralded the development of ever more advanced technology. These technological advances touch almost every aspect of human life—including education.
Metaverse as a technology product is predicted to be a technology trend with huge potential in the future. The Metaverse is even predicted to be a trend in the world of future education.
So, what exactly is the Metaverse?
Zhang, et al. (2022) state that the metaverse is a new virtual universe, as it comes from a compound of “meta-“, meaning beyond, and “verse” (the root of “universe”, cosmos; the whole world). Neal Stephenson (1992) is the first writer to have coined this word in his science fiction novel Snow Crash. The novel described how people could access and interact with each other in a 3D space that mirrored the real world through digital agents (avatars).
The term was then further discussed by researchers. In 2007, a metaverse research organisation, the Acceleration Studies Foundation, took the first step by proposing a roadmap for the metaverse, defining it as a virtually augmented physical reality and a physically persistent virtual space.
How is Metaverse in Education?
Scientists believe that education is the most important sector for realising the potential of the Metaverse. Some studies also support this statement by saying that the metaverse in education can be considered as an enhanced educational environment by using technology that is able to combine virtual elements with the actual educational environment.
The metaverse allows students to access the learning process without the constraints of time and space. It even allows them to interact using digital identities so that they can interact in real time with different forms of objects such as avatars, intelligent NPCs or virtual learning resources. In addition, the metaverse can reveal great learning activities that can help them explore, perceive and create the world in unprecedented ways.
Another advantage of the metaverse is that it can support blended learning. During the pandemic, it was shown that it can overcome the shortcomings of online learning, which are often related to students’ lack of motivation. Professor Jeremy set up a course of virtual people that encouraged students to actively participate in the learning process through the metaverse platform. In addition, the metaverse also supports virtual experimental learning and competency-based education for vocational schools. In this way, it can be shown that metaverse can open up other opportunities in education, which can make education brighter.
