Metaverse Schooling: The Future of Distance Learning?

This fall, millions of students across the US are returning to school – and, in accordance with recent trends, many have come back to in-person schooling. But let’s not confuse this for a return to the old pre-pandemic normal. The pandemic has irreversibly changed the way students can access the classroom. As of June, 98% of public schools offered full-time in-person teaching – but also, 33% of public schools offered full-time remote teaching. 

These developments mirror similar trends in the workplace, where 33% of all businesses offer a mix of in-person, remote, and hybrid options. In education, the options are no longer simply the in-school experience or a home-schooling experience. We have distance learning – the hybrid model. We can expect distance learning to grow in line with “adult-world” workplace norms. And as we become familiar with this mode of learning, we’ll see a fourth option emerge: school in the metaverse. 

What is the metaverse?

First, let’s recap what the metaverse actually is. It’s an immersive environment made up of multiple connected virtual settings, where users can interact socially and with objects in that setting. Right now, developers are building individual experiences enabled by augmented reality  and virtual reality (AR/VR). In the future, we’ll see those experiences seamlessly connected for the user to explore. In terms of education, students will be able to move from the virtual classroom to the virtual museum or library – or to yet-to-be-imagined settings that don’t exist in the physical world. And in the metaverse, students will be able to learn in settings that combine virtual and physical elements. 

The broad and rich potential of the metaverse suggests what the future of distance learning could look like. We know the common criticism distance learning gets today: Learning behind a screen makes lessons feel more ephemeral and less tangible. Students may get distracted at home. Educators may feel like they have less control over their “classrooms.” But we also need to remember these are growing pains students and educators are experiencing as a result of distance learning being so new in mainstream education. And the standard tools used for distance learning today are nowhere near as sophisticated as metaverse applications are. 

In the metaverse, students and educators may be physically situated far from each other, but they will be together, and accountable, within the same virtual space. Distance learning in the metaverse will feel tangible again – and if a lesson involves observing or handling an object, students will be able to do that synchronously, instead of passing it around the classroom. Students in the metaverse will truly be able to learn by doing, making lessons more relatable and memorable. The time and money spent traveling to and from field trips can be greatly reduced. These metaverse experiences will make learning more efficient and engaging, and also more efficient. They’ll open the door to even more group collaboration and deeper exploration of the broader world than the physical classroom can be able to provide. 

Technology

But first, educators need the right technology. They’ll need AR/VR-enabled tools, and they’ll need technology that enables real-time engagement across devices and across locations. These tools will need to provide a seamless experience – which means they’ll need to handle strain on network bandwidth without causing audio or video lag or distortion. These tools will also need to support real-time engagement regardless of whether a student has access to the most cutting-edge or the most run-of-the-mill devices – the metaverse needs to provide an equitable experience. If the metaverse learning experience is to be at least as engaging as the classroom experience – and educators should really start imagining metaverse settings and lessons that can be more engaging than the classroom – it will need to be synchronous and uninterrupted. Technical glitches are the kinds of distractions developers and educators will want to remove as we evolve beyond distance learning as we know it today.

Another technology educators need to explore is blockchain tech. Blockchain isn’t just for cryptocurrency, after all. A blockchain keeps a time-stamped record of transactions and events, which can’t be edited later on without affecting any more recently-logged records, and it’s decentralized – no one entity “manages” it. In other words: Blockchain makes cheating, in almost any form, very difficult to cover up. In the metaverse classroom, blockchain can enhance transparency and accountability – once again removing one of the major pain points educators and students alike experience in current-day distance learning. 

Education in the metaverse

Education in the metaverse has the potential to be safer and overall more comfortable for the widest possible range of students. Developers are building metaverse experiences with accessibility in mind – using features such as avatars, soundboards, voice-changing apps, 3D audio, vibrations, and more, to enhance hybrid physical-world/metaverse experiences as well as in pure metaverse settings. These features eliminate friction in the classroom that students with particular physical or emotional needs often experience. 

The metaverse can even help curb bullying. Metaverse applications make use of artificial intelligence and machine learning technology, and AI and ML models can be trained to recognize bullying language and actions, abusive language, threats, and other aggressions – and it can be trained to understand the context in which those words and actions happen, and how severe those offenses are. Students can be very inventive in how they harass their peers – sometimes trying to code their speech so adults won’t readily understand their meaning. But AI and ML can analyze and interpret language as tone, sentiment, and overall meaning evolve. This will lift from educators’ shoulders some of the burden of keeping students safe and comfortable, knowing a sophisticated AI “moderator” can pinpoint offenses quickly.

Educators, developers, and other stakeholders need to take the time to imagine the kinds of learning experiences they want to provide in the metaverse. They can turn to their peers, and also to other industries that are leaning into AR and VR – such as the business world (where the hybrid workplace is evolving quickly), entertainment (where spectators and listeners can interact in a virtual arena or concert hall), and interactive gaming. Then they need to seek the technology and partners who can enable those experiences. Real-time engagement will be at the center of the metaverse or hybrid classroom – and educators must take the effort to find partners who can support it, and help make metaverse learning a better alternative to distance and even in-classroom learning.

You might also like: First educational platform to teach kids programming via metaverse gaming