Education is widely regarded as a catalyst for transformation. Students are introduced to novel academic and research domains through the integration of technological advancements. The Metaverse inclusion in the education sector has marked a radical break with conventional teaching practices by introducing a new paradigm shift in classroom education. This chapter is about the examination of the possible role of the metaverse in the future of education. Metaverse platforms possess the ability to bridge the gap between the digital and physical worlds by providing students with a safe controlled and diverse interactive learning environment, which advances their interaction. The chapter also covered the educational difficulties brought about by the Metaverse, including protecting students from potential dangers and establishing standards to ensure a high-quality education that sets an example for the world at large.
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Education is an ongoing and continuous process that significantly influences the overall quality of an individual's life. Every nation recognizes the worth of education since it has a direct impact on the advancement of the country. Education serves as a complementary factor in the progress of individuals, societies, and nations. The education system underwent a significant transformation due to the quick advancements in technology and the gains made in learning methods. The advent of technology has revolutionized education with the use of e-learning, which provides ease, personalization, and agility. Education technology is a platform where academic performance is improved, student skills are enhanced and creativity is expressed. For instance, creative design calls for such things as the right infrastructure, and dynamic evolving learning spaces to remain relevant with future changes in curriculum and meet changing student demands. This innovation has greatly increased access to education of superior quality for all. The growth of technology catalyzes a change in thinking since every learner is exposed to an exceptional global standard system of education. Through the integration of education with technology, the right set of circumstances has been opened up regarding accessibility, excellence and knowledge. The metaverse talks about the fully immersive internet that gives us access to virtual and augmented reality while connecting through persistent avatars along with cutting-edge digital technologies.
The phrase ‘Metaverse’ was introduced in 1982 in Neal Stevenson's book Snow Crash. (El Jaouhari et al., 2023) the characters can go to Stevenson's Metaverse, a virtual world, to get away from the depressingly oppressive real world. During the early 1990s, Sega introduced VR arcade games, which were available for play in various multiple arcades. Following that Sports Vision broadcasted the first NFL game live with these other sports broadcasters soon adopted the practice of superimposing graphics onto real-world imagery. In 2014, Facebook purchased Oculus and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg notified that Facebook and Oculus would establish a collaborative collaboration to enhance the Oculus platform and provide more support for a wider range of games. In 2014, XR experienced significant activity as Sony and Samsung declared their intentions to create their virtual headsets, while Google established its first Cardboard device and Google Glass augmented reality (AR) spectacles. The Metaverse, an emerging iteration of the Internet, amalgamates several cutting-edge technologies. Its fusion with the education sector has immense promise (Hines & Netland, 2023).
The chapter highlights the dynamic and ever-changing nature of the metaverse. It identifies three key attributes of the education metaverse: interaction, immersion, and diversity. These traits serve as the foundations of the education metaverse. In the face of various information sources, teachers are facing an uphill struggle in trying to teach the antiquated “chalk and talk” technique to the current generation of tech-savvy kids. Additionally, as the importance of the Fourth Industrial Revolution has grown, education has been seen as the road to Education 4.0. As a result, learning environments have been redesigned with pedagogies fit for the twenty-first century, an organic curriculum has been implemented, new concepts and academic disciplines like artificial intelligence, data science, and big data have emerged, and the most recent educational and learning technologies have been integrated.
The metaverse has been characterized as a step inherent in the evolution of the Internet. Visualize a virtual cosmos where thousands of people join in, get employed and trade, everything they need is taught and communicated to them by their relatives, friends and strangers who are living on VR only (Sangeeta & Tandon 2021). Today’s computational devices display serves as passages to augmented 3D virtual legitimacy that imitate global maps reducing the communication gap.