EDTECH IN THE METAVERSE WORLD

The metaverse has suddenly taken up a lot of mind space. As the Meta and Microsoft of the world, release a deluge of video campaigns to imagine use cases of the metaverse world, there are very few out there, who are talking about how edtech companies will evolve in this new mixed reality world. An interconnected set of experiences, the Metaverse will affect how we play, we watch movies and, what's most interesting, is how we learn. The social media companies of the world have had more than a few experiments with education and learning. Whereas Facebook has tried various mediums of learning on their platform, ByteDance tried the largest short-form education campaign with Edutok.

But before I go ahead, let me address the naysayers. Many believe that the Metaverse campaign is just a method for Mark to move the focus from privacy issues on Facebook, which is being widely questioned, led by the US congress. But many were surprised when Satya Nadella jumped into the world of Metaverse by addressing how work will change based on the Metaverse world. And that's when the tide turned. But this revolution around the metaverse has been in the making for some time. Many would not have forgotten the second-life app, where users could login and walk the virtual world. Microsoft with its Xbox platform and the Minecraft acquisition has obviously a lead in this area, where Microsoft users are already using the virtual world of Minecraft to play and learn. I am sure Meta lawyers and corporate teams would be knocking on the doors of Sony for their PlayStation platform. In addition, a silent revolution was taking place around AR/VR with hardware and software both reaching a level that they could support industrial and practical use cases. Digital twin, virtual factories and 3D models of cars are now commonplace even at traditional organizations. Even publishers adopted to AR/VR at length, creating a virtual come-to-life image of a heart from bio textbooks. So the Metaverse is here to stay. Here are 5 areas around Metaverse that product teams like @ImaginXP are now breaking their heads around: -

Simulated case studies and a metaverse of virtual internship - Case studies from the time education has started has been read and if an adventurous professor, then practised role play. A game-like virtual environment, where students are faced with crisis situations to mould their critical thinking and decision making abilities is the next step. With the pandemic and work from home here to stay, virtual internships are going to be the next major step in education. The biggest problem, for the industry to use student resources, has been the distance between the educational institutes and the industry. With work from home, virtual internships are here to stay. Over the past 1 year, we have had many companies approach us to enable their students on virtual internships.

Metaverse of virtual university - With labs becoming virtual as we speak, and online education becoming the norm, we are not far away from a metaverse of virtual universities. Today, we don't require a sprawling campus and physical classrooms to enable good quality education. A virtual professor, a virtual lab is enough for the students to start learning. The experience can be made better by solving the issues of online education where peer to peer collaboration and communication still has a lot of friction. Joining a virtual classroom, in which you can see, speak and interact with the avatars of fellow learners is the next innovation in the classroom waiting to happen.

A Virtual Degree Discovery platform - Degree discovery for a high school student is one of the biggest problems in higher education. As students start choosing degrees that are not aligned with their aptitude and interests then employability goes down and the cost of education goes up. With Pragati maidan like university admission events getting disrupted from the pandemic, a virtual degree discovery and counselling is here to stay. ImaginXP tried this last year and got an immense response from the students - to try it out visit https://imaginxp.com/virtualecm/

Campus hiring in the metaverse - One of the biggest costs that companies would want to avoid is that of hire-train-deploy. Today companies are looking for first-day-deployable resources. They don't want to spend on training and reduce the cost of campus hiring. The HR team till today actually travels to all university locations and a few minutes of interviews tries to judge which would be a suitable candidate. This process is waiting to be disrupted with a metaverse based campus hiring experience. Body language and face emotions are till today the biggest judge of a character of an interviewee. Metaverse can replicate that easily, also provide additional information about the experience and the character of the student.

I am sure a lot of our readers will have brilliant ideas on the use cases of learning and education in the metaverse. Do put it in the comment. ImaginXP team is writing a paper on the use cases and the experience of education in the metaverse and we would love to feature your ideas in the paper. Thank you.