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Metaverse Learning: The Future of Educationby@loistinoco
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Metaverse Learning: The Future of Education

by Lois TinocoSeptember 10th, 2022
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Metaversity is a virtual learning space based on the concept of digital campus and [virtual reality] Metaverse is a VR (Virtual Reality) platform known for its unique concept of creating a digital universe. It facilitates numerous aspects of everyday life in a digital way, such as gaming, advertisement, education, travel and tourism, real estate, digital currency, workplace, and numerous others. The benefits of Metaverse are exceptionally prominent for the education sector, making it a popularly growing choice for education institutes looking to go digital. This is resulting in an increase in the number of'metaversities.
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The education sector is rapidly evolving to a better and more advanced version. As more people are realizing the importance of quality education, the global focus is shifting to creating solutions that facilitate this need.


The advent of technology has a major role in this aspect, as getting educated is easier than ever before, owing to digitalization. Speaking factually, 84% of the total learners agree that digitalization has improved the quality of education. This factor has also contributed to increasing the global literacy rate, as education is more accessible to all sections of society.


Out of all the technologies available for digital learning, Metaverse is the most prominent and undoubtedly the most popular one. However, this technology is relatively new, and therefore a significant part of the global population isn't aware of its existence. Therefore, let's start by understanding what exactly Metaverse is.


Increasing Popularity of Metaverse

Metaverse is a VR (Virtual Reality) platform known for its unique concept of creating a digital universe. The origin of Metaverse dates long back to the 1990s, but the technology has been recently popularized by Meta Platforms (formerly known as Facebook Inc.). Metaverse is one of the most promising forms of technology innovations and is especially popular among the younger generations.


Metaverse facilitates numerous aspects of everyday life in a digital way, such as gaming, advertisement, education, travel and tourism, real estate, digital currency, workplace, and numerous others.


As a result, more and more businesses are investing in the Metaverse and are benefitting from its tech advancement. The technology is highly safe and secure and is a reliable form of the virtual environment. This makes Metaverse a promising form of digital technology with great future potential.


The benefits of Metaverse are exceptionally prominent for the education sector, making it a popularly growing choice for education institutes looking to go digital. This is resulting in an increase in the number of 'metaversities'. However, what is metaversity? Let's find this out in the upcoming section.


Metaversity: An Emerging Concept

Metaversity (Metaverse-based university) is a virtual learning space that is based on the concept of digital campus and virtual reality. These digital campuses are fully capable of delivering quality education and are as good as, and in some cases, even better than, a brick-and-mortar campus.


Metaversities offer a great learning environment to students and enhance the quality of education. Moreover, these metaversities make education more accessible, as they are based on a virtual platform and facilitate remote learning. A well-designed metaversity is a complete platform for various forms of learning, such as academic learning, hobby learning, and even skill learning. It enables educators as well as learners to seamlessly achieve the learning objectives.


Overall, the concept of metaversities, even though is relatively new, has many benefits. Let's take a closer look at these benefits in the next section.


8 Benefits of Taking Your Education Institution to Metaverse

Cost-effective

It is a commonly known fact that financial constraint is one of the leading reasons why many people are unable to get educated. This is one of the major contributing factors to the global illiteracy rate and a prominent challenge. One of the most notable benefits of Metaverse is that it is a cost-effective approach to accessing quality education. By using Metaverse-based learning solutions, students can get a classroom-like education at a considerably low price.


Interactive Learning

Students tend to learn faster and more efficiently when taught through interactive methods that make education feel less like a chore. One of the best examples of this concept is Metaverse-based learning, a technique proven to be far more enjoyable than learning on books and paper. Metaverse not just facilitates virtual learning but also enables the students to walk and do activities in the virtual classroom, enhancing their willingness to attend lectures.


What's more? The students can interact with each other, play virtual games, take notes, and do everything else they otherwise would in a brick-and-mortar classroom, just in a more interactive fashion.


Easily Accessible

Metaverse is known to increase the accessibility of education for numerous parts of society. Many times, metaverse classrooms are based on easily available technologies like mobile applications; therefore, all that is needed to access them is a mobile device.


Owing to this factor, many educational institutes are investing in developing Metaverse-based digital solutions for virtual learning. This factor is also a major contributor to increasing the scope of education.


Tech Perks

Technology is a well-proven medium for increasing task efficiency and generating desired results in a short time. Metaverse enables education institutions to utilize technology to their benefit and enhance learning.


Moreover, present-day students are tech-savvy and prefer doing things the digital way. Metaverse enables students to seamlessly access and explores learning resources, further adding to their academic learning. In addition, students can gain hands-on experience in various subjects like Chemistry and Biology through VR-based lab experiments.


Another tech benefit of Metaverse is increased integrity of the examination process, which makes testing students' knowledge a seamless task even in a digital world. These are just a few of the many ways in which education institutes can benefit from integrating Metaverse-based learning solutions.


Gamification of Learning

As we discussed before, the more interactive the learning process is, the higher the learner's efficiency will be. Metaverse aids this need by gamifying the learning process and making it seem less like another tedious lecture. Gamifying learning will help the students to thoroughly understand the concepts and will most certainly increase their participation.


Adding rewards, badges, and using quests are a few ways to gamify learning on Metaverse. Moreover, providing real-time visual experience on certain concepts will enhance students' grasping ability and motivate them to finish their assignments on time.


Use of Illustrations

One of the major drawbacks of traditional learning methods is the lack of optimum illustrations. However, it cannot be denied that illustrations are fundamental to learning concepts in certain subjects. Metaverse enables educators to overcome this challenge and teach their subjects seamlessly with highly interactive illustrations.


For example, if the students have to learn human anatomy, the teachers can provide a precise and clear visual outlook of every aspect of the subject and make learning more fruitful. Moreover, Metaverse facilitates 3D and working illustrations that are further enhanced by Augmented Reality and motion graphics.


Hands-on learning

Having hands-on experience is fundamental in certain industries. It not only prepares the students for the real-life implementation of their knowledge but also adds to their existing skill set. Moreover, this hands-on experience is also useful in employee skill training, an aspect that many businesses are prioritizing at present.


By using Metaverse, educators can easily teach numerous technical skills without incurring a high cost. For example, in order to demonstrate how to launch a rocket, we no longer have to launch actual rockets but merely have to use VR solutions like Metaverse. This will save the time and cost of learning and ensure efficient results with a fine hands-on training session.


Seamless Parent-teacher Interaction

Many education institutes place parent-teacher interaction at the heart of their practices. This communication between the student's educators and guardians ensures that the education process is efficient and satisfactory. However, the traditional education system requires the parents and teachers to be physically present in one place, often making it challenging for them to interact with each other.


Metaverse, on the other hand, being a virtual reality platform, eliminates the need for physical presence during parent-teacher interactions. The platform enables teachers to virtually meet the student's parents and easily communicate with them. Moreover, the teachers can also present test report cards and progress reports to the parents using Metaverse, and the parents can ask questions and easily clear their doubts.


Now that you are aware of the benefits of integrating Metaverse in your education institution, it is time to dig into the platform’s technical aspect. The following section will discuss the technologies that can further enhance Metaverse learning and take it to the next level of educational excellence.


Technologies that Enhance Metaverse Learning

Augmented Reality

AR (Augmented Reality) is a technology that superimposes virtual content over physical one to generate the desired results. Instagram and Snapchat filters are the best and most popularly known examples of Augmented Reality. At present, AR is used for various purposes like gaming, entertainment, learning and development, education, etc.


Generally speaking, mobile phones and tablets are ideal for using AR and creating hyper-realistic visual results. Moreover, Metaverse, being a virtual platform, is highly integratable with Augmented Reality and is capable of increasing the quality of digital education.


Artificial Intelligence

Metaverse education is a complete solution to the needs of present-day learners. Owing to this factor, the platform is gaining immense popularity and is witnessing high user traffic. As a result, it can be challenging for educators to provide individual attention to each student.


This is where AI (Artificial Intelligence) can be helpful. Based on machine learning and big data, AI can easily clear students' doubts even in Metavese's digital world with ease and provide an enhanced learning experience. Artificial Intelligence has been a crucial part of the education sector for years.


Speaking factually, the market for AI-based education is expected to surpass 20$ million by 2027. This makes AI a highly promising investment for Metaverse-based education institutions. Moreover, it is worth noting that the combination of Metaverse learning and AI is new and, therefore, is rarely implemented. As a result, by implementing this technology, your education institute will certainly have early bird advantages and will gain a distinctive market position.


Mobile Application

Mobile applications are one of the most popular forms of technology at present and are highly user-friendly. You must know that mobile apps are practically one of the most compatible technologies with Metaverse. As a result, it is a trend among education institutions looking to go digital on Metaverse to build a mobile app. Generally speaking, there are two ways to build a mobile application, which are native app development and cross-platform development.


Ideally, native mobile apps are chosen for creating Metaverse-based learning solutions. This is because native app development guarantees high-end performance, a critical factor for VR-based platforms like Metaverse.

Blockchain

Blockchain is a hack-proof technology that is highly immune to any kind of security breach or data theft. This is a factor that most digital technologies aspire to have, owing to the rapidly increasing vulnerability of data security in the digital world. Metaverse is no exception in this matter and can tremendously benefit from Blockchain.


By integrating Blockchain into your Metaverse learning solution, you can offer an optimally secure virtual learning platform to the learners.


Now that you know how to enhance your Metaverse classroom and increase its benefits, you must be wondering, what is the cost of building a Metaverse-based digital classroom, right? The upcoming section will cover this subject in detail.


What is the Cost of Building a Metaverse-based Virtual Classroom?

The cost of building a virtual space on Metaverse is highly dynamic. A lot depends upon your requirements and the features that you wish to add to the platform. In any case, you will need to hire external human resources to get a Metaverse platform developed for your business. On average, it can cost anywhere from $1,15,000 to $2,00,000 USD to build a Metaverse classroom. You must know that the actual cost can be higher or lower than this amount, depending upon your business's requirements.


Final Thoughts

Metaverse is a highly advanced form of technology and is gaining tremendous popularity. The platform holds a highly promising future for the education sector. By using Metaverse, education institutes can not only enhance the quality of education but can also increase their operational efficiency.


By thoroughly understanding the advantages of Metaverse and undertaking an extensively planned implementation process, you are certain to achieve tremendous success in digital education. This will not only benefit the students but will also enable you to keep up with the latest market trends. This makes investment in Metaverse a highly profitable and promising one.