METAVERSE EDUCATION
We invite you to take your education experience to the next level in the metaverse we build
Metaverse Education provides a virtual-reality space that allows students to learn without being limited to physically sitting in a classroom. In that space, students will interact with peers and teachers using computers and virtual-reality technology. Students will put learning into practice in a real-world-like environment on a variety of subjects. The system will generate customized profiles for each student including information about their learning habits and optimal pace of learning, These profiles will be used to implement an adaptive learning plan for each student. The system will give feedback and provide unique study plans that best fit each student. Teachers and parents are able to track each student’s progress to make sure students are on track to meet their learning needs.
EXTENDED EXPLANATION
Problems
Online education has become much more widespread in K-12 education and higher education due to the COVID-19 pandemic beginning in late 2019. The accessibility and flexibility of online education provided schools with a viable option to continue education during the pandemic. Unfortunately, many schools and teachers were not well-prepared to make the rapid shift to online learning due to the rapid spread of the Covid virus. In most schools, online education was implemented as a replacement for delivering the same course content to each student without having much change or development in the instructional design. For example, teachers continued to give lectures, but with Zoom, a video conference tool, instead of in the classrooms. Students were asked to watch the lectures on the computer screens. However, there are many problems when students receive the lecture in a different format regarding interaction, feedback, motivation, and attention.
The first problem is the lack of interaction during online classes. According to social constructivism, interaction and collaboration are important factors during the process of learning. Students interact with peers and teachers to develop their own ideas and understandings of what they learn. In traditional classes, students are given the opportunity to raise their hands in class anytime when they have a question or new idea to discuss with teachers. Sometimes students are also divided into small groups in class for discussion or for collaborative work. However, during online class meetings, there were no face-to-face opportunities, and the process of interacting with peers and teachers became much more restrictive. Communication is not limited to oral language when gestures, body language, and eye contacts are also important. It is difficult for the full range of communication to occur using video conference tools. Technical issues such as Internet connectivity problems may cause interruption and distraction as well.
The second problem is the lack of real-time feedback in online education. Students do not have scheduled class meetings in many cases. The course content is usually posted and managed through a Learning Management System (LMS). This system is also the place for students to submit homework assignments and take exams. However, the feedback from the teachers usually arrives in a few days, which is sometimes longer than expected. When students are in the process of working on an assignment, if questions appear, they have to reach out to teachers through emails or messages built in the LMS. Again, the process of getting teachers' responses may take time. It would be great if students could get instant feedback from teachers, either a real teacher or an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system. This will make the students’ thinking and learning process continuous and precise.
The third problem is that there exists a lack of motivation and attention when taking online classes. What students receive from a virtual class meeting on the computer screen is just the information from a video. This is a very simple process when students only see it and hear it. It is easy for students to lose attention and motivation when facing a screen for a long time unless they are playing video games. Also, anything that could happen in the surroundings may be a big distraction, for example, the unnecessary sound from the street and roommates. When students lose attention at some point, it is also hard for teachers to notice and bring them back to the class. In face-to-face classes, teachers will immediately know if a student is focusing or not by making eye contact. Therefore, teachers will engage with the class by asking questions to get everyone's attention. This is not likely to happen in online classes because what teachers see on the screen is a big window with many small faces.
In addition, the cost of attending face-to-face classes and the flexibility could also be problems. Education is expensive, which means not everyone has access to it. It makes little sense because teachers need to be paid, and the expense of running a physical campus is enormous. Some students may be part-time because they are working on getting tuition, and their schedule is not flexible if classes are all scheduled tight. A well-developed online education system will address these problems.
Audience
The Metaverse Education software serves students, parents, teachers, and institutions in both K-12 education and higher education. The problems discussed above occur anytime online tools are used as the primary delivery system for education. Since the start of the COVID pandemic, it has been important to enforce social distancing rules. This has led to a decrease in student motivation combined with screen fatigue associated with sitting in front of a computer all day. This has caused many problems for students in schools. This product is designed to overcome both of these challenges by giving students a game-like interface where students can imagine they are going to familiar places such as classrooms, libraries, and study rooms. Students can also travel virtually to any environment that best fits the course objectives, such as a forest or mountain top for Geography classes. Students will develop strong interests not only in lectures through classrooms but also in different outdoor environments. For students attending higher education, the product will also provide financial support and flexibility besides the features mentioned above. In addition, the system allows parents of K12 students to supervise their children as they learn online. They can also participate in these educational activities which allows them to grow and learn together with their children.
Teachers and institutions as the ones to provide educational services will benefit from this system with a reduced workload in delivering course content to students physically. With the saved time, teachers and institutions will focus on curriculum development and instructional design to improve the effectiveness of students' learning process.
Approach
The Metaverse Education system will address all the problems mentioned in the Problems section. First, the system provides a virtual environment to facilitate interaction, collaboration, and communication among students, peers, teachers, and the technology they use. Some equipment, for example, VR headsets and VR remote controllers, will be used to build an immersive experience. Students will have similar experiences sitting in the classroom with peers and teachers. Each person in the classroom has a self-designed 3D avatar that is able to move and talk. The experience of taking an online lecture becomes very similar to what happened in traditional classrooms.
Second, the system will use machine learning (ML) to develop an adaptive learning (AL) environment for students, which means each student will have a personalized learning path and pace based on the student’s level. ML helps the system collect and analyze the data collected from students through activities and assessments. The AL system will then establish a unique learning path for each student to pursue the goal at a proper learning pace. The system learns from the feedback of students to make AL accurate. The more students use the system; the more precise AL will be. Real-time feedback from the system to students is also available in this process.
Third, the learning environment that the system provides is not limited to virtual classrooms. In many practical classes, students will have the opportunity to explore the outdoor environment to solve real-world problems. For example, in geography classes, students will have the immersive experience by travelling to different places around the world virtually. This not only motivates students and helps develop interests but also enhances the learning process.
In addition, Metaverse Education is a web-based or software-based system, and the cost will be relatively low compared to attending traditional classes. What's more important is that students are able to use the system anywhere at any time. Students will have the flexibility to decide their ways to learn, and this helps create a good balance between study and life.
DESIGN STORY
Henry is an international student from China. He was admitted to a university in the US in 2020; however, he could not physically be in the US due to travel bans during the COVID pandemic. The university provided him with two options: he could start his program as soon as possible but virtually, or he could defer for another year to see if the travel restrictions would be moved. He decided to start with online courses because he doesn't like a gap year.
After Henry’s first semester, many issues emerged. He had a difficult time managing his schedule because the course meetings were in a different time zone. He was also less motivated when facing a computer screen for a long time. During class meetings using video conference tools, he was often distracted by the noise from the street. In addition, he could not improve his English language skill because there's not much opportunity to talk to peers during and after class meetings. Fortunately, after bringing this situation up to his academic advisor, Henry was offered to study in a pilot program using an advanced learning system named Metaverse Education (ME).
He started his second semester by taking classes in the ME system using a VR headset and artificial skin to have an immersive and personalized learning environment. The ME system provided Henry with a customized learning path by analyzing Henry's previous performance in other courses. Henry could take classes at his own pace without worrying about being in a different time zone. The ME system also created a virtual reality learning environment for the university. When Henry logged into the system, he could make a 3D avatar, walk around the university, and sit in virtual classrooms. This looked very familiar with a game he played before, and he was attracted and motivated by this system. After he put his headset and artificial skin on, no noise would be a distraction anymore. What was most beneficial to him was that he could talk to different students from all around the world in the virtual environment, and his English skills improved dramatically.
At the end of his second semester in distance, Henry said that he hoped all the courses in his program could use the ME system to assist students with a personalized learning path, motivate students, and promote peer communications.
HIGH-LEVEL CONJECTURES
The lack of interaction and communication, the lack of self-management ability, and the lack of motivation are 3 big issues through previous studies (Moore et al., 2015; Bentley et al., 2015; Davis et al., 2019) as well as my observations and experiences as a student. This article illustrates 3 high-level conjectures regarding the 3 issues mentioned in online education. I will also discuss assumptions about how to support learners and educators by developing a virtual-reality learning environment in the context of online education. I will start with 3 embodiments, tools and materials, task structure, participant structure, that Sandoval (2013) proposed as essential components of a high-level conjecture map. The mediating process and outcome for each embodiment will be further explained.
Tools and Materials
In the desired personalized and virtual-reality learning environment, I will introduce 3 technologies as tools to promote the learning process. The tools are VR headset, skin-like material, and adaptive learning algorithm. All 3 tools aim to improve learners’ presence,which is a feeling of physically being there. According to a framework, Educational Framework for Immersive Learning, introduced by Dengel and Mägdefrau, immersive learning was defined as “learning activities initiated by a mediated or medially enriched environment that evokes a sense of presence” (Helmke and Weinert, 1997; Dengel and Mägdefrau, 2018). It is essential for learners to establish presence in a learning environment, and this goal is usually less likely or easily to be achieved in online learning. Research showed that presence greatly facilitates and enhances learners’ learning process and academic performance in the area of language learning, memory structures, and biology studies through immersive learning activities (Roy and Schlemminger, 2014; Lin et al., 2002; Lee et al., 2010). The VR headset helps learners enhance presence by providing visual and auditory simulations, and it also isolates learners with outside distractions such as noise from the learners’ background. Learners can access the isolated and virtual learning environment regardless of their physical locations and time zones, while they don’t feel isolated from the learning activities because of the visual and auditory sources. The skin-like material is wearable to provide learners the sensation of touch in a virtual environment, it also improves learners’ experience of performing practical tasks. By using the skin-like material, learners can experience the practical activities using their own hands rather than watching someone else’s demonstrations, which can benefit learners’ understanding and muscle memory. The adaptive learning algorithm is a tool to ensure that the experience is learner-centered, which means an individual learner has a personalized learning path and pace with customized learning activities. This gives learners great space to explore, and the adaptive system becomes more accurate and beneficial as it collects and analyzes data from learners’ activities and assessment. The learning environment built with multi-dimensional sensation capabilities will greatly facilitate interaction and communication among learners, peers, and teachers by establishing a comfortable place like the real world. The use of VR headset and skin-like material forges a game-like environment with fun features and operable interfaces to promote motivation. The adaptive learning approach gives learners the opportunity to practice self-management skills as the learners are active in building a self-paced and personalized learning path.
Task Structure
The task structure of current online education mainly consists of video conferences for lecture delivery and learning management systems for features such as assignment, assessment, feedback, and other resources. While this aligns with achieving learning objectives in many subjects to acquire knowledge of facts, it is difficult for learners to develop a deep understanding of practical skills using video conference tools and learning management systems. Therefore, the task structure of learning in a virtual-reality environment slightly sets the focus on enhancing practical skills. For example, in a language learning class, students wearing VR headset and controllers can communicate “face-to-face” by operating the 3D avatars to perform daily dialogues. Students master their language skills by making speeches, eye contacts, gestures, and body language, which are not easily or even possible to happen in a video conference class. As another example, in a geography class, students sitting in a virtual classroom can have the chance to “teleport” to another environment to explore and experience new landforms and geological materials. This is also not likely to happen in online classes using video conference tools and learning management systems.
Participant Structures
In the virtual-reality learning environment, learners take the lead to interact with peers, teachers, and technologies. Learners become more active to attend learning activities, manage their time, and give feedback. Teachers take the role as supervisors monitoring learners’ progress and making necessary adjustments. The learning materials and activities will be delivered by the adaptive learning system after collecting enough data from learners. In K-12 classes, parents can also participate in the learning environment to complete appropriate learning activities with their children to increase learners’ motivation.
References
Bentley, K. J., Secret, M. C., & Cummings, C. R. (2015). The centrality of social presence in online teaching and learning in social work. Journal of Social Work Education, 51(3), 494–504. https://doi.org/10.1080/10437797.2015.1043199
Davis, C., Greenaway, R., Moore, M., & Cooper, L. (2019). Online Teaching in Social Work Education: Understanding the Challenges. Australian Social Work, 72(1), 34–46. https://doi.org/10.1080/0312407X.2018.1524918
Dengel, A., Mägdefrau, J.: Immersive Learning Explored: Subjective and Objective Factors Influencing Learning Outcomes in Immersive Educational Virtual Environ- ments. 2018 IEEE International Conference on Teaching, Assessment, and Learning for Engineering (TALE), Wollongong, Australia, 608-615 (2018)
Helmke, A., Weinert, F.: Bedingungsfaktoren schulischer Leistungen. Max-Planck- Inst. für Psychologische Forschung (1997)
Lee, E.A.-L., Wong, K.W., Fung, C.C.: How Does Desktop Virtual Reality En- hance Learning Outcomes? A Structural Equation Modeling Approach. Computers & Education, vol. 55, no. 4, 1424–1442 (2010)
Lin, J.-W. Duh, H., Parker, D.E., Abi-Rached, H., Furness, T.A.: Effects of Field of View on Presence, Enjoyment, Memory, and Simulator Sickness in a Virtual Environment. Proc. IEEE Virtual Reality 2002, Los Alamitos, California, USA, 164–171 (2002)
Moore, S. E., Golder, S., Sterrett, E., Faul, A. C., Yankeelov, P., Mathis, L. W., & Barbee, A. P. (2015). Social work online education: A model for getting started and staying connected. Journal of Social Work Education, 51(3), 505–518. https://doi.org/10.1080/10437797.2015.1043200
Roy, M., Schlemminger, G.: Immersion und Interaktion in virtuellen Realitäten: Der Faktor Präsenz zur Optimierung des geleiteten Sprachenlernens. Zeitschrift für interkulturellen Fremdsprachenunterricht. Didaktik und Methodik im Bereich Deutsch als Fremdsprache, vol. 19, no. 2, 187–201 (2014)
Sandoval, W. (2014). Conjecture Mapping: An Approach to Systematic Educational Design Research. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 23(1), 18–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2013.778204
TENTATIVE RESEARCH PLAN
My research plan includes developing an introduction, framework, significance of the study, research questions, and research design.
The introduction will contain the background and current issues of online education, for example, how popular is online education in both K-12 and higher education level, why the effectiveness of online education has been controversial, and what are some issues emerging through the recent implementation of online education. The introduction will also include reasons why learning in a virtual-reality environment could solve the issues mentioned. There will also be literature reviews on the development of immersive learning including a timeline, major researchers, main findings, and research gaps. At the end of the introduction, the research questions will be shown with potential findings.
I will also develop a conceptual framework to better demonstrate how the Metaverse Education works for students, teachers, and parents in the format of a flow diagram chart. Students’ path will also be emphasized and illustrated including entering the systems, performing learning activities, interacting with an adaptive learning system, providing feedback, and doing assessments.A theoretical framework will also be provided to give foundational guidance and supportive evidence. The significance of the study will be briefly covered to show the reasons and logics behind the research design. It will explain how the Metaverse Education system could potentially benefit students and teachers and provide a better learning environment for online classes. Then the study design will be introduced including participants, context, data collection, and analysis.
This study will aim to investigate whether learning in a virtual-reality environment improves the effectiveness of online classes, the interaction and communication among students, peers, and teachers, students’ ability of self-management, and students’ motivation. The research design will include participants who are undergraduate students taking online classes in language studies and STEM subjects. I will reach out to educational technology companies and websites to request a demo of the courses as well as possible VR tools. Students will be assigned into 3 groups with Group 1 taking classes fully in the immersive environment, Group 2 taking classes fully in regular online settings with only a video conference tool and learning management system, and Group 3 taking classes in a hybrid format. Data includes academic performance, surveys, and interviews will be collected and analyzed to discover whether taking classes in an immersive environment improves students’ performance, facilitates interaction and communication, enhances the ability of self-management, and promotes motivation.
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