A Metaverse Landscape - The Educational Metaverse

In the second of our five part series on the metaverse landscape, we look into our second defined area of metaverse technology and its nascent environment with a deeper dive into the Educational Metaverse.

There are several very clear use cases for the metaverse across the education sector, as it has the potential to make learning, teaching and personal development more engaging, effective and… extraordinary.

At a high level, the metaverse will transform education lessons that are just watched to a set of experiences that are ‘’lived’’. This produces deeper learning, instilling not just knowledge but intuition.

The Educational Metaverse is for schoolchildren: Imagine that rather than learning from books, images or films, students can find themselves in the middle of events, from experiencing day to day life in ancient Rome, walking with dinosaurs or even shrinking to microscopic size to travel inside the human body.

The Educational Metaverse is for graduate, postgraduate students or adult learners: Imagine being able to virtually meet with most distinguished speakers, lecturers and attend any course, anywhere in the world at any time? Imagine that huge virtual campuses could hold almost unlimited students from around the globe, truly democratizing education and increasing its availability for all.

The Educational Metaverse is also for vocational training and education: Imagine being able to train on dangerous, expensive or difficult to recreate tasks. For example, to practice surgery or life saving techniques in a realistic environment, or for firefighters to train in disaster management.

It will also help to speed research and development across multiple verticals, hence the diagram’s overlap between the Industrial, Educational and Enterprise Metaverse sectors.

For example, starting in 2021, the Swiss technology body EMPA has been researching Digital twins enabling customized medical therapies. Empa researchers have now modeled several hundred avatars based on real people and treated them experimentally.

But is this form of learning better than our current physical and web2 formats? What is the difference between the Educational Metaverse and simple distance learning via Zoom or Skype?

Well, early research says it has very exciting potential. We can summarize by stating that the metaverse will transform education from lessons that are just watched to a set of experiences that are ‘’lived’’. This produces deeper learning, instilling not just knowledge but intuition.

Virtual environments can also increase the pace of learning. According to a study conducted by PwC, employees trained with the help of VR technology completed their training four times faster than those who trained in the classroom setting and 1.5 times faster than with e-learning.

The reason for this is that gamification coupled with 3D elements and simulations keep learners engaged and fully focused on the material -  allowing them to absorb the information faster.

So what can Everdome’s role be here? We are already experimenting with some basic concepts of immersive learning about humans' relationship and history with Mars.

Our dual commitment to a hyper-realistic environment combined with basing our world in viable science provides an excellent foundation for future learning applications around space and Mars exploration.

We believe that immersive experiences in education can be so realistic and interactive that students will develop knowledge, skills, and intuition that becomes second nature.

Join us in imagining the power of the metaverse differently.

#TheJourneyHasBegun