How can the metaverse revolutionise the world of education? ????

If there is one innovation topic that everyone has been talking about for the past few months, it is the metaverse! What promises to be the possibility of interconnected, immersive and collaborative 3D virtual worlds has been the dream of science fiction writers for decades, but is starting to become much more concrete thanks to technological progress in recent years.?

Among the uses of the metaverse, one in particular emerges as one of the most relevant: education.?

For what better way to learn about a subject than to be immersed in the field you wish to study? So, rather than learning about the history of ancient Rome, Egypt or the Middle Ages using only books, you can virtually transport yourself to the place "as if you were there", and experience for yourself what life was like in those times! To understand certain complex mathematical concepts, you can visualise them in 3D and better understand geometry for example. Visit factories, companies, remarkable places and monuments without having to move a group of students.?

Intuitively, it is easy to imagine that this type of learning method must be more effective than just attending a lecture, but here are some arguments demonstrated by research in the field of education:??

We retain what we do much better than what we see/hear?

It is undeniable: we retain something we have experienced ourselves much better than if we receive a purely theoretical lesson on a subject.?

The learning cone represents the different learning activities, correlated with the rate of retention of information. Why do we see such disparities in the different learning modalities?

Quite simply, because the more senses involved in processing information, the more the brain is called upon and the more learning traces there are, and therefore the better the neural network in the brain.

Since virtual reality involves the senses of sight, hearing, proprioception (with the position of the body or limbs in a virtual space to keep your balance), and touch thanks to haptic feedback, it is one of the media capable of soliciting a great many of your senses, and thus allows you to have experiences that have a greater impact on your memory than watching a simple video on a subject.

Moreover, from a cultural point of view, 3D video games are among the media widely used by new generations of students, who are very comfortable exploring these virtual worlds and are even keen to have interactive and immersive educational experiences.?

But beware: virtual reality is not a synonym for the metaverse! For an immersive educational experience to be part of the metaverse, it must also be interconnected with other systems (an LMS, for example, so that learning traces can be saved), it must be experienced with other users (taking a virtual field trip with several people will be much more memorable than taking it alone), it must be easy to switch from one experience to another, and it must be possible to do it remotely.?

The arrival of the metaverse in the world of education thus makes it possible to free oneself from the physical constraints and geographical and budgetary barriers that limit the possibilities of providing pupils and students with impactful educational experiences. It is even possible to experience very risky situations virtually, such as exploring the vicinity of an active volcano, which would be unthinkable in the real world because of the very high level of danger for learners and their teachers!?

Unfortunately, one of the main barriers to the use of this technology in education today is the high cost of content creation: there are no technical constraints to creating metaverse relevant course content today, the main constraint is the technical complexity required to create immersive educational content, requiring the use of experienced engineers and developers, which is a significant cost.?

At Inetum, we have identified this as a major constraint for several years now, and have focused our efforts on developing our Intraverse platform to address this issue. With Intraverse, you can become completely autonomous in the creation and modification of your immersive educational content.?

This means you can create new immersive content to complement your traditional courses, to captivate your class and offer them a memorable and lasting educational experience!?

Do not hesitate to contact Manon Thibon or myself Nicolas Perrier to discuss these topics if you are interested. We will be happy to accompany you and guide you in the possibilities offered by metavers for your educational projects!

Nicolas Perrier, innovation consultant and XR expert, Inetum