Educational Metaverse: teaching within immersive environments

The term “Metaverse”, coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 science-fiction novel “Snow Crash” (Stephenson, 1992), has become increasingly popular in recent years not only in the technological environment, but also in the public debate. The novel depicted an environment that presented a virtual world accessible through specialized glasses and headphones. The protagonist embraced this immersive experience to detach from the difficulties of his actual life, assuming an alternate existence by embodying an avatar. The core elements of the experience portrayed in the novel align closely with those prevalent in contemporary Virtual Reality (VR) encounters. These experiences plunge us into diverse Metaverses where we now often find ourselves working or engaging with others. The ongoing technological advancements in VR, coupled with the global surge in sales of Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) over the past decades (ReportLinker, 2023), have significantly increased the accessibility of immersive worlds crafted for the Metaverse, making them available to a wider audience. Multinationals such as Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta have chosen to invest huge amounts of capital in the development of virtual environments that are able to reproduce not only the appearance of the real world, but also the sociality between the people who populate it (Quast, 2023). The possibility of coexisting with others in a virtual place easily accessible through HMDs has led to numerous ethical discussions regarding such platforms seen as unregulated and potentially dangerous places for the individual (Kaur, n.d.). However, the Metaverse can be a huge opportunity to restructure the way knowledge is delivered at school and university level by bringing students to share lessons specifically designed to be experienced in immersive environments.