The impact of the virtual world on university education

The pandemic accelerated the digital transformation process and the education sector has had to adapt to new trends and transcend the integration of virtual worlds.

Specialists consider that, just like the virtual and hybrid classrooms that are gradually replacing the traditional classroom with the new era of education, it is practically a fact that the metaverse will soon emerge as the natural teaching-learning environment for the new generations.

According to a recent study by Wunderman Thompson, 75% of economically active people depend to a greater or lesser extent on technological tools for their daily activities.

Metaverso

The Smartraining platform points out that we are in the midst of a cultural change regarding the exponential growth in the use of virtual environments, since a study carried out by The New Consumer concludes that close to 50% of Generation Z people feel more identified with themselves within online environments.

“In recent years, technology giants like Microsoft and Facebook now called Meta (its new adopted name projecting the impact of the metaverse) have begun to bet on innovation in virtual reality environments based on the behaviors and preferences of the people. new generations in relation to technology and how it is increasingly rooted in its day”, says Gustavo Aguilar Joussé, CEO of Smartraining.

In such a way that this marks a trend in the transformation in various sectors such as educational technology or EdTech, generating an impact in the field and showing the revolution of changes that will be generated in it.

Smartraining points to six trends that tell us how metaverse technologies will change college education and business training:

1. Potential in virtual environments: Various platforms have become popular and have contributed important advances to cement the dynamics and codes of behavior in the minds of students, as well as healthy usage habits and security measures. This level of digital literacy would be unthinkable without the boom in platforms such as Roblox, Minecraft or Fortnite, which at an early age help young people to acquire training skills for the next decade.

2. Increase in the quality of learning. We will see a quantum leap in the way educational institutions reconfigure their academic offer to create more flexible and effective programs.

3. Gamification and teaching: The implementation of immersive technologies in the educational process will allow a more intense and playful experience for students that will not only improve their engagement with their own preparation, but also improve the effectiveness of learning.

4. Democratization of education. With the development of the metaverse for the education sector comes an opportunity for a larger market for the business of educational institutions, increasing their enrollment to previously unexplored geographies, to grow in their existing markets or benefit from adjacent markets.

5. New ways of understanding the student and the teacher: The teacher should adopt more of a role of facilitator, mentor and guide. While the student will stop being passive to become the protagonist of adventures that he will choose which islands of human knowledge he wants to know and master.

6. Inclusion of new partners in training programs: Educational institutions will begin to generate closer partnerships with technology companies and alliances with various industrial sectors for the development of content for the educational metaverse, jointly generating increasingly experiential educational programs and specific to the needs of the business world.

“The implementation of the metaverse in the education sector brings multiple benefits and an unprecedented cultural change, we are all together taking this quantum leap towards a completely new way of conceiving the educational experience. A closer collaboration of the Universities with the technology companies and the industrial sectors will allow to transform the way in which students and staff are trained to exponential the learning of the new generation to levels never seen before in the history of humanity. ”, assured the CEO of Smartraining.

Examples of the metaverse in education

According to the learning company Pearson, many companies around the world are beginning to develop immersive 3D technology for educational purposes. Facebook, on its website, indicated that they are currently investing $150 million in virtual reality resources for learning.

“Taking advantage of the metaverse in education requires that institutions become familiar with the immersive technologies that power virtual environments and that allow them to provide students with an experience closer to the real world,” they point out.

1. Virtual campuses in the metaverse. One of the medium-term goals of many top-tier institutions is to begin a radical digital migration into the metaverse. The goal is for students from all over the world to be able to attend a 100% virtual campus, identical to the real university campus, and simultaneously coexist with colleagues and teachers remotely and in person.

2. Simulators with high contextual fidelity. Currently there are already simulators for students in careers such as medicine, aeronautics or civil engineering, which involve a high level of complexity and in which a wrong move can be fatal. Thanks to technology, before going out to work in the real world, students can practice critical operations in controlled environments.

3. Virtual tours around the Earth (and other planets). Museums, distant cities, natural ecosystems and even different geological eras can be explored thanks to virtual reality. For example, the metaverse will allow an English learner in Colombia or Brazil to listen and practice the language in environments that emulate an English-speaking city and with native speakers.

4. Learning on the go. If the student has smart glasses, she could complement her tours of places of academic interest with all kinds of additional information.

alba.servin@eleconomista.mx