How Will the Higher Education Industry Adopt the Metaverse?

Living in the digital world means a lot more than having a social media account or a personal website. People are rapidly embracing more sophisticated digital building blocks such as avatars, NFTs, and digital currencies such as Bitcoin. The natural next step is to consider how universities, a place that historically combines social and educational values, will evolve to serve audience needs today. Universities adapting to the Metaverse would secure the relevance of higher education in the digital age. 

What is the Metaverse and how could colleges utilize it? 

The Metaverse refers to a digital experience where people live through their avatars. Gaming platforms such as Roblox and Fortnite are examples of how the Metaverse is evolving. With the list of VR capabilities offered now such as playing games and attending virtual concerts, what if people used the metaverse to attend school and learn? 

A number of higher education institutions are in the early stages of finding out. Recently VictoryXR, a provider of augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) content for schools and educational institutions, said that it is collaborating with 10 colleges to launch ‘Metaversities’ in the United States this fall.  

Participating schools will launch digital twin replicas of their campuses for students to attend (whether they are on campus or learning remotely). Students will receive a Quest 2 VR headset for use during the course they are taking. Students attending class remotely will receive loaner VR headsets in the mail. Some of the participating colleges will have headsets available for on-campus students to attend class in the Metaverse. All students can explore a 2D version of their digital campus using regular computers. Courses will be synchronous or multi-student as if they were attending class on a physical campus. 

The following institutions are participating:  

• Alabama A&M University 
• California State University Dominguez Hills 
• Morehouse College 
• New Mexico State University 
• Northern Illinois University 
• South Dakota State University (SDSU) 
• Southwestern Oregon Community College (SWOCC) 
• University of Kansas School of Nursing 
• University of Maryland Global Campus 
• West Virginia University 

The VR courses offered wouldn’t be exclusive to certain subjects, too. SDSU said they already have two science classes in the works while SWOCC is ready to offer VR classes in disciplines ranging from forestry to microeconomics. With a wide range of courses offered, universities will be able to mimic and offer the “in-person experience” to elevate even a basic gen ed course.  

This means students can have 24/7 access to a “classroom” space to access course material and the course lecture of the day at any time through the day not just at the time of the recording. Flexible access to information is one of the biggest conveniences of the digital age. Students can have access to news, social media, banking, healthcare, and their wallets online; why not make classroom and eLearning part of that access to information.  

Why should universities consider a better long-term online platform?  

We recently blogged about the emotional strain that college students are experiencing. According to a poll conducted by the Lumina Foundation and Gallup, about a third (32%) of currently enrolled students pursuing a bachelor’s degree have considered withdrawing from their program for a semester or more in the past six months. 

Seventy-six percent of those pursuing a bachelor’s degree who have considered stopping out report they did so because of emotional stress they were experiencing. 

A sudden and unexpected transition to remote learning played a role for students of all ages unaccustomed to taking online courses. Those students include people with learning disabilities, those who perform and thrive on physical interaction, and students who may have unique or complicated housing situations where the classroom is the only place available to concentrate or study. 

When colleges adapted Zoom as a learning format during the pandemic in 2020, almost immediately the solution was criticized for being unimaginative and stressful – hardly the experience befitting an increasingly costly college experience. The results of the Lumina/Gallup survey suggest that the situation has not improved.  

Colleges are learning to live with the reality that pandemic flare-ups could continue to disrupt in-person classes, making it necessary for them to conceive of a better long-term solution to Zoom classes. The metaverse could do that – as well as provide an imaginative and immersive alternative for campus living when lockdowns happen. 

Benefits and risks of the Metaverse  

Is the Metaverse the answer to easing the mental health crisis in college education, though? Or will the Metaverse make it worse? 

On the one hand, an all-encompassing, interactive digital experience in which students and faculty interact through avatars could be the kind of creative solution to boring Zoom classes that universities have been seeking. The concept of a Metaverse creates exciting possibilities for the future of education. 

Metaversities could provide an excellent way for students to learn about the fast-emerging Metaverse – which could generate $5 trillion in near-term economic opportunity.   

On the other hand, it is also an evolving new territory that’s far from being fully built out. The fact is any new venture or technology is also subject to new vulnerabilities. There have emerged considerable concerns that the Metaverse could magnify the societal harms that exist on the internet already, ranging from sexual assault to the erosion of mental health. More critics are calling for developers of metaverse platforms to take a more mindful approach by closely managing the design of the Metaverse in a more inclusive, safe way. Our advice for any university looking to embrace this technology is to have active safety measures in place and a team in charge of developing rules, monitoring activity, and actively pursuing cases by acting against any violations. 

Takeaways 

The concept of a Metaversity should be a wake-up call to higher education: old ways of doing things aren’t going to work in the long run. Even if a college is not quite ready to open a Metaversity, it’s clear that a more immersive approach to learning, including augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality, needs to be factored into their futures. 

Contact Investis Digital 

Investis Digital helps higher education institutions tailor content, create better UX friendly support sites and offers customized recruitment and retention strategies for the needs of today’s students. We discuss some of our lessons learned in a newly published white paper, Higher Education Marketing: Six Trends in Online Higher Ed. 

The white paper is based on services we provide to help colleges and universities market themselves, including paid media, search engine optimization, content and creative, web design and development, social media, and more. 

Download the white paper to start increasing enrollments for the upcoming academic year. To start your enrollment journey or talk about how to support the new student journey, talk with one of our higher education experts here or learn more about our Connected Content Approach, here.