Due to the unique ability of making knowledge freely available anywhere at a very cheap cost, ICT is recognised as a key instrument for delivering excellent education. The new, linked virtual world ushers in an easy and unrestricted movement of data, cash, ideas, goods, and people. It is projected that the usage of the metaverse in education would upend current learning methodologies since it will increase learning strategies, the use of technology, and the options available to students, educators, and education providers. Nevertheless, there are presently few systematic studies on how scholars used immersive virtual reality for academic purposes that noted the use of both expensive and inexpensive head-mounted displays. Therefore, this chapter aims to examine virtual reality and Eduverse from a historical and technological standpoint. The success of virtual reality in education will primarily depend on how motivated students, as the main consumers, become and their capacity to recognise the key components required to reach a suitable degree of learning through virtual reality.
TopIntroduction
Son & Amparado (2018) emphasized the importance of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in every country’s developmental plan. ICT has been identified as an important tool to convey quality education and present a radical approach to address developmental needs due to their unrivalled capacity make information readily available at any location globally at a relatively low cost. Consequently, the new interconnected virtual world heralds a fluid and unhindered flow of information, funds, ideas, products, and people. With the convergence technologies, information is no more restricted to text and book form but now includes real-time audio and video (Son & Amparado, 2018).
The critical effort of aligning recent technology in higher education with research is to allow users to get a greater level of virtual reality immersion. This enables users to gain better knowledge with experience both from the new technology and educational assets. In addition, this helps ongoing interaction in an educational, community centred, culturally thoughtful, ethically right, and economically viable environment. Metaverse application in education is anticipated to change the present learning methods since it will elaborate the present learning practices, the use of technology and more opportunities on hand for users, educators, and providers of educational services. Thus, the introduction of emerging technologies into education is a necessity to improve on the delivery, content, construct, and the teaching and learning outcomes of course curriculum. Such technologies are artificial intelligence, virtual reality, 5G network and so on.
Several educators have examined the gains from the various use of digital virtual reality (VR) in diverse situations. It is clear that virtual reality has great potential in its educational application which has drawn considerable interest of late. In spite of this, not many findings are available on how scholars in tertiary institutions have use immersive VR that use of both good and low-cost head-mounted displays (HMDs) (Radianti et al., 2020). Therefore, this chapter aims to review virtual reality and Eduverse from history and technical perspectives. This study can assist system developers to understand how virtual reality and Eduverse can benefit higher education. The remaining section reviewed virtual reality including definition, history, and its applications in education. Furthermore, metaverse and education are discussed from different perspectives. Then, challenges and limitations of virtual reality and Eduverse are discussed, and the chapter ends with discussion and concluding remark.