#artificialintelligence #82: Designing learning experiences in the Metaverse using the inverted Bloom / Reverse Bloom taxonomy

Welcome to Artificial Intelligence #82

This is an article about some work we are doing in the metaverse(Metaverse: Creating and Deploying Services). Despite the challenges of the company meta this week, we still believe that the metaverse is a great learning tool.

Designing learning experiences in the Metaverse using the inverted Bloom / Reverse Bloom taxonomy

By Ajit Jaokar, Dr Yogita Khedkar, Pinkney Benedict, Dr Diana Teresa Parra-Sanchez, Aditya Jaokar, Ayse Mutlu, Matt Gordon?

Abstract

In this article, we explore the idea of how the metaverse could be used as a learning platform. We put the recent developments in the metaverse in context and propose that we could develop a? learning pedagogy in the metaverse using an inverted bloom taxonomy. Such an approach would complement the skills based emphasis in education today.?

Note that while the idea of reversing / flipping bloom’s taxonomy is uncommon, it has been proposed for a decade now. We are proposing that reverse bloom/ inverted bloom should be a key pedagogy for learning in the metaverse.?

The discussion on Bloom’s taxonomy for the metaverse has been developed primarily by Ajit and Yogita for the University of Oxford course on Metaverse: Creating and Deploying Services. Ajit, Pinckney, Diana, Aditya, Ayse and Matt are incubating a start-up at SIU ?called salooki.ai to develop future learning technologies such as these. The article is also contributed to Consejo de Colegios Mayores Universitarios and translated into Spanish by Andrea Lorenzo Urones .??

The ideas discussed here are developed further at Oxford University and at SIU. If you are interested in this course, please see the link above. If you are an institute and are interested in piloting these ideas with us, please contact Ajit Jaokar or Pinckney Benedict.???

Background?

According to McKinsey and others, the metaverse will be potentially a $5 trillion market by 2030. But recent developments have been more sobering. With the layoffs at meta this week, it's time to review metaverse strategies.Recently, Meta cut 11,000 jobs (13 percent of the workforce). The current economic climate is likely to be more stringent towards companies and initiatives that do not make a profit and the Reality Labs metaverse division of Meta lost over $3.6 billion in the third quarter of 2022.

But Meta has a “long-term vision for the metaverse.” - considering the above what could it be? And does? it really matter?

If we break down the components of the metaverse, they are AR/VR, devices, presence, payments (including NFT) and a platform that brings it all together (in the case of facebook - the horizon platform). There were also other motivations like ‘work from home’ - however, in the current climate - which are being progressively reversed. For facebook/meta itself, their primary motivation was the drop in advertising revenue in their core business. That was always a defensive reason to try and build the metaverse - as opposed to a desire to create something new for its own sake. The metaverse functionality can be put together by others. Indeed that's already happening with Microsoft (Enterprise and Industrial metaverse) and Nvidia(Omniverse).?

However, we know that Meta is committed to 'immersive experiences'. In this sense, considering the 'long term vision for the metaverse'? - For which areas will people pay for immersive experiences?

Education and Games are the two most logical areas. These are more traditional and also profitable. In this sense, metaverse 2.0 could be less radical and more functional. And that can actually be a good thing. Thus, while we may yet see considerable uncertainty in the near future, metaverse will be deployed and useful - not just in the way as originally envisaged by Meta. Considering our emphasis on education, in this article, we discuss how we could design learning experiences in the Metaverse using the inverted Bloom / Reverse Bloom taxonomy.?

Why does learning in the Metaverse matter??

Eileen McGivney at the Human Development, Learning, and Teaching at Harvard University presented a set of compelling narratives for learning in the Metaverse. The immersive experiences of the metaverse provide compelling learning experiences, for example, with the ability to swim through a coral reef from your living room or taking students on a field trip to walk on the moon without them ever leaving their desks.?

Thus,? XR(Virtual reality, Augmented Reality, Mixed reality) can be a great gateway into a new topic to spur interest and motivate students to learn more.

“Half the battle is getting kids to care about what you’re trying to teach, so VR, because of the way it situates someone in the environment and the power it can provide for storytelling, it gives someone an emotional experience, which really connects to student excitement and investment,”

Eileen McGivney source Harvard.edu - what will learning in the metaverse look like

So, in this case, the learning goal changes from ‘teaching’ a student’ to ‘giving the student an exploratory learning experience’ so that they can gauge if they want to potentially pursue the subject further.?

Hence,? we could see this form of learning as a complement to skill based learning.?

The flipped / inverted Bloom’s Taxonomy??

We propose the use of a flipped / reverse Bloom’s taxonomy for the Metaverse. We first discuss the idea of the reverse bloom taxonomy.

In Education, the revered Bloom’s taxonomy classifies various types of cognitive thinking skills. Conceived in 1956 by a group of educators chaired by Benjamin Bloom, the taxonomy classifies skills from least to most complex. In both the original and revised versions, Bloom’s taxonomy is proposed as a pyramid with the core idea that one cannot effectively begin to address higher levels of thinking until learners master the lower levels of the taxonomy. The pyramid structure compels learners to a slow and laborious sequence of steps.? This pyramid approach has led to standardised testing and boring curricula causing learners to potentially lose interest.?

The approach worked well in the post-war era where there was a need for simplicity and uniformity depicted by an easy to understand visual representation.? However, students today have access to multiple sources of information and can be put off by the tiered approach of Bloom's taxonomy. Students are also creative. Hence, the idea of the reverse bloom taxonomy as an alternative pedagogy is interesting because it does not treat ‘creativity’ as a scarce resource. Rather, we put creativity at the centre of learning.?

Thus, with reverse bloom, we shift the emphasis from factual knowledge to creativity, analysis, critical thinking, evaluation with multiple journeys / learning paths that the student could avail of.?

Image source: Shelly Wright - Flipping Bloom’s taxonomy

The ideas are similar to Scenario based learning or ATDD Acceptance test driven development?

References for this section:?

1. Shelley Wright - flipping Bloom’s taxonomy?
2. Sam Wineburg, Jack Schneider - Stanford University - Inverting Bloom’s taxonomy?

The flipped Bloom’s Taxonomy as a pedagogy for learning in the Metaverse?

Given this background, what does it mean for the metaverse?

A possible approach could be:

1. Given a problem domain in any field, students first create an artefact in the metaverse.?
2. They then compare their work with domain experts and professional examples?
3. Learners could further design their own evaluation criteria and compare with the tutor
4. This process could iterate

Thus, with reverse bloom, we shift the emphasis from factual knowledge to creativity, analysis, critical thinking, evaluation with multiple journeys / learning paths that the student could avail of.?

Conclusion

In this article, we explored the idea of how the metaverse could be used as a learning platform. Despite the recent challenges for the metaverse, we propose that we could develop a? learning pedagogy in the metaverse using an inverted bloom taxonomy. Such an approach would complement the skills based emphasis in education today. While the idea of inverted bloom itself is not new, the application to the metaverse is novel.?

The discussion on Bloom’s taxonomy for the metaverse has been developed primarily by Ajit and Yogita for the University of Oxford course on Metaverse: Creating and Deploying Services. Ajit, Pinckney, Diana, Aditya, Ayse and Matt are incubating a start-up at SIU ?called salooki.ai to develop future learning technologies such as these. The article is also contributed to Consejo de Colegios Mayores Universitarios and translated into Spanish by Andrea Lorenzo.??

The ideas discussed here are developed further at Oxford University and at SIU. If you are interested in this course, please see the link above. If you are an institute and are interested in piloting these ideas with us, please contact Ajit Jaokar or Pinckney Benedict.???

Image source Pixabay