Create an immersive classroom experience
The biggest change that Metaverse brings to education is the experience of the teaching method that the public is most concerned about.
This is the case when Stanford University in the United States launched the first “Virtual Human” course completely based on virtual reality.
Inspired by the novel “Neuromancer”, Stanford University professor Jeremy Bailenson launched the first course in Stanford’s history that is completely set in virtual reality — Virtual Human.
The “Virtual Human” course allows all students who choose this course to break through space constraints, wear VR helmets anywhere in the world, and appear in the same “classroom”. The teaching is all carried out in VR, and the classroom can be in museums, laboratories, under the sea, and possibly in remote craters. Through immersive experiences, students can experience things that can only be felt through imagination in a new, virtual and interactive environment.
Professor Baireson called this “virtual human” classroom an internal “Metaverse Development Company”, in which each student’s existence is presented in the form of an avatar.
Take the online VR courses provided by Morehouse College in the United States as an example. In March 2021, Morehouse College officially announced the opening of a VR campus after receiving sponsorship from Qualcomm, while offering VR courses. The VR course is a fully immersive VR experience — with the support of Qualcomm, students can access the fully immersive, digital version of the VR course content through the Oculus Quest2 supported by the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 platform. for example:
- In biology class, students can unfold the human heart and step into it during the course;
- In the history class, students can walk on the battlefield or hover over the battlefield, looking at history from the perspective of “God”;
- In science class, students were able to witness atoms spinning around them;
- Medical students can experience precision instruments at zero distance in the Metaverse, and observe an intense and meaningful operation;
- Students majoring in design can directly experience a design event, tailor it by themselves, and get in touch with various materials that are difficult to access;
- Students in astronomy class can wear AR glasses to learn planetary knowledge, and the entire universe will appear in front of you, and you can clearly see their textures and characteristics by zooming in and out at will;
- For architecture students, if they want to learn ancient architectural knowledge, they can directly “travel” to that era. For example, go back to ancient Rome 2000 years ago to understand how ancient buildings were built, experience and witness the details of the great buildings;
- For sports courses, students will gain a more realistic experience in the application of fitness and sports activities, such as turning boxing into fighting monsters, participating in AR riding courses at home, or competing with Olympic fencing champions. Field stimulating battle etc.
For students, the “virtual reality” required for teaching can be realized through AI, AR\VR technology, wearing AR\VR equipment, etc., so that the static content in the paper textbook can be transformed into an interactive real scene. , Touch all angles to strengthen cognition.
The author believes that this new way of experience reflects most people’s forward-looking imagination of the application of Metaverse Development Services in education.
Breaking through the boundaries of the physical campus, the Metaverse Campus was born
In addition to bringing a new experience to teaching in the field of education, Metaverse also brings a larger level of application. This is the case with the metaverse campus.
On July 28, 2022, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology announced that it will establish the world’s first physical entity in the Metaverse — a digital twin campus. The Guangzhou campus, which opened in September, provides a better teaching and learning experience.
Specifically, this “world’s first physical-digital twin campus” project, officially called “MetaHKUST”, will be used for Extended Reality (Extended Reality or XR) of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) campus that will open in September. ) campus. The Virtual Twin Campus not only provides an immersive learning experience, but also an integrated platform open to all students, staff and alumni, enabling the HKUST community to create, innovate and connect across campuses.
What can MetaHKUST bring to HKUST? This is a question that concerns most people.
According to the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, this is a long-term development plan. In the first phase, the university will establish the main infrastructure including extended reality classrooms, sensors, cameras and visualization equipment, etc., and then crowdsource and scan all university members to provide the required impact.
In MetaHKUST:
- Members of the university can create their own content in the system, including personal avatars (Avatars), NFT (such as virtual world gift certificates or works of art), etc.;
- The NFT part created by university members can be displayed or used in the real world with augmented reality (Augmented Reality or AR) technology;
- The university will become more convenient in distributing information and handling administration. For example, in the form of non-homogeneous tokens, using blockchain technology to issue encrypted diplomas or transcripts; campus open days or graduation ceremonies can also be held independently in MetaHKUST;
- In the future, professors and students of the two campuses will be able to interact and participate in the same class in two parallel spaces at the same time.
The above is the “ideal world” of “MetaHKUST”. It is believed that with the continuous development of Metaverse technology, more and more rich scenes will be produced. The application of Metaverse in education is not only in the campus, social and education-related enterprises are also promoting the application and development of Metaverse in education through various measures.
Web3 technology changes the business model of education platform
Regardless of whether Stanford University and Morehouse College in the United States have changed their teaching methods and brought new experiences, or the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology created the Metaverse Campus to bring more possibilities, at present, they are all aimed at improving the shortcomings of current teaching. Changes at the superficial experiential level.
But for Learnoverse, a Lithuanian educational metaverse platform, the performance goes more to the core. Learnoverse is exploring a better education model at the value level of the Metaverse.
Learnoverse, a Lithuanian educational Metaverse Development solutions platform, is a newly launched Web3 learning platform under BitDegree. It hopes to create a virtual world for Web3 learning users, and gamify learning content and experience, so that learners, lecturers and brands can interact and interact through NFT. Imparting knowledge, the concept of Learn & Earn in education is used to reward learning and motivate students to complete courses.
The ideal of Learnoverse is very web3. For example, the concept of “Learn & Earn” is one of the specific applications of the concept of “X2E”. The concept of “earning while learning” put forward by Learnoverse just happened to hit the minds of many users.
Learnoverse stated on its official website that it focuses on encryption and blockchain education, and plans to combine the Learn & Earn system to build its own encryption learning metaverse, so as to provide various users with the concept of encryption-native education.
The concepts are as follows:
- Users (Learners): Serves complete beginners as well as those who are about to master the subject of encryption;
- Teachers: Anyone with knowledge of crypto topics can become a teacher and teach, mentor and earn;
- Crypto projects: build their reps, sponsor courses, buy ads, help create Web3 educated users and talent (for their projects);
- Influencers and brands: create their representation to be discovered, engaged and followed on other social media;
In this process, its parent company BitDegree (BitDegree has been developing various blockchain applications for education, such as blockchain certificates, peer-to-peer blockchain scholarships, and gamified learning platforms, etc.) provides technical support for Learnoverse. The learning status and assets on the two platforms are also interoperable and synchronized.
Learnoverse plans to gradually transition from 2D to 3D “CryptoDegree City”, and first build Learn&Earn token economics, Learndrops, NFT avatars, land and buildings, etc.
Each user can correspond to a virtual role in the Metaverse, and NFT and other learning credentials or academic certificates can be used as personal information (achievement, status, and NFT assets) to provide identity dimension information in the encrypted community of the Metaverse. Learners, teachers, project parties and brands can interact through NFT and display their knowledge status and social identity on the chain.
It can be seen that the education and business of Learnoverse are very closely integrated. There is not only a learning platform, but also a virtual world “CryptoDegree City” that all members can enter and interact with each other through virtual avatars and NFT assets. Cosmic platform Decentraland is very similar.
Summarize
Through the above analysis, the integration and application of metaverse combined with education, some are to supplement the limitations faced by the current educational development status, such as Stanford University, Morehouse College, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; some have profoundly changed the depth of education Models such as Learnoverse, the Lithuanian educational metaverse platform.
However, there are still some changes taking place. For example, the University of Tokyo established the “Department of Metaverse Engineering” to try to solve the problem of technical talents in the future metaverse in Japanese society; Swinburne University of Technology in Australia cooperates with financial technology companies, and Ankara University in Turkey adds NFT courses. Keep up with the times with the technological development of the society; the Bahamas launched the national educational metaverse platform “Metacampus”, hoping to solve the current situation that educational resources are too scattered.
Standing at the moment when the metaverse is developing, we can see that the metaverse and education are mutually accomplished. Especially in the initial stage of the development of the current metaverse, it will need more outstanding talents, and education can continuously develop, cultivate and deliver talents for the metaverse. Therefore, in this sense, the metaverse and education are closely related to each other.
In the future, how will the application of the Metaverse in the field of education develop, and what potential changes does the field of education need to bring about in the Metaverse? As time progresses, we can look forward to the future of the field of education in the Metaverse.
