An immersive digital world reaching postgraduate education
It is already common for business schools to explore teaching in the metaverse. For example, from a lectern below three giant screens, Professor Alain Goudey lectures on digital transformation to students from around the world in a conference room that seats hundreds of people. Yet all of this is in the virtual realm, one that offers a glimpse of a potential future for entrepreneurship education.
This takes place at Neoma Business School in France, which is one of many forward-thinking European institutions entering the metaverse, an immersive digital world where students are represented by 3D avatars. This is due to its potential to make learning more interactive, but also business opportunities.
An invaluable market
Management consultancy McKinsey estimates that the metaverse will generate up to $5 trillion in value by 2030.
“It’s very important for business schools to be at the forefront of educating future managers about the metaverse,” says Goudey, professor of marketing and associate dean for digital at Neoma. “It’s going to shape the world of tomorrow.”
Although the metaverse is hailed by some as the next generation of the Internet, business schools disagree on an exact definition. They also disagree on how, or even if, it will work in practice.
At Neoma, students experience the metaverse as avatars on a virtual campus
The school has also developed several virtual reality case studies that immerse students in real corporate dilemmas, allowing them to apply theory in practice. “Immersion enhances the power of role-playing and simulation,” says Professor Goudey. “It’s amazing to see how deeply impacting pedagogy is.”
He says that Neoma hopes to integrate virtual reality into the virtual campus to improve the learning experience for remote participants.
Last year, tech companies like Meta (formerly Facebook), which are racing to create virtual worlds filled with avatars, pushed the potential of the metaverse into the public psyche. Now, some of these tech giants are working with business schools to enhance the educational experience with immersive technologies.
Business opportunities in the metaverse
Polimi Graduate School of Management in Milan intends to offer seminars with Microsoft in which International Flex Executive MBA participants will learn about potential business opportunities in the metaverse.
Additionally, Polimi is planning for EMBA participants to try out VR headsets and experience various scenarios, enabled by Fadpro, an edtech company partially owned by the school. These will include virtual trips to companies, allowing students to gain first-hand business experience without having to physically travel to the location.
Looking ahead, Polimi dean Federico Frattini thinks the metaverse could work well for teaching “soft skills like leadership and teamwork.” This is because it can allow students to detect non-verbal behaviors ( gestures, postures) more easily than when video conferencing.“This is a context in which replicating a physical environment through technology can improve learning outcomes,” says Frattini.
Very sophisticated tools
Investment in sophisticated tools for interactive learning has been accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic, which pushed business schools online.
“In our industry, there has been some hesitancy to adopt new technologies for fear that they are not good enough,” says Barbara Stöttinger, dean of the WU Executive Academy in Vienna. “What the pandemic has done is open our minds. It has shown us the possibilities and the speed with which we can innovate.”
This year, WU partnered with Tomorrow’s Education, an edtech start-up, to launch its Professional Master’s in Sustainability, Entrepreneurship and Technology. The program is delivered entirely on the school’s virtual campus, accessible through an online application. “We need to think about the next generation that will grow up in the metaverse,” says Stöttinger. “Eventually, it will be imperative for us to be there. This investment makes us future-proof.”
The pandemic has shown us the possibilities and the speed with which we can innovate
Institutions view the metaverse as a way for students to interact in more meaningful ways, but also as a platform to create business opportunities.
At Essca School of Management in France, students on the MSc International Business 4.0 program create their own avatar in Second Life, the long-established 3D online world, and spend time observing how other avatars behave. Each student then identifies a potential business opportunity for a luxury brand in the metaverse, such as selling digital goods, and creates a virtual prototype.
“We need to prepare our students to be ready for the future,” says Orsolya Sadik-Rozsnyai, director of Essca’s online campus, noting that luxury houses are exploring business opportunities around virtual goods and non-fungible tokens.
The challenge for business schools
For business schools, she says, the challenge is to avoid using technology for technology’s sake. “The metaverse could be the next iteration of the Internet, but until we find the right use cases, it will remain a fantasy,” she argues.
Despite the exciting possibilities of the metaverse, business schools are still a long way from reaching their full potential, says David Lefevre, professor of practice in digital innovation at Imperial College London Business School. “It’s a fantastically seductive idea of an alternate universe that we inhabit, but the metaverse right now is more of an aspiration,” he says.
Move freely in virtual worlds
Key challenges include ensuring interoperability, which would allow students to move freely between different virtual worlds. High power consumption is also a concern. “The resources required to operate the virtual environment, whether in the cloud or on-premises, are considerable,” says Tamim Elbasha, associate dean for quality learning and development at France’s Audencia Business School.
Roselva Tunstall, director of the edtech lab at ESMT Berlin, raises more questions. “Digital accessibility is a challenge,” she says, noting that virtual reality can be expensive and can also cause motion sickness. Faculty and staff would also require training to teach classes using these tools, she adds.
Privacy and data protection
Other schools cite privacy and data protection concerns as barriers to bringing business education into the metaverse. In any case, Tunstall says she’s unlikely to supplant traditional teaching methods. “The metaverse is not meant to replace, it’s meant to enhance.”
How will education change in the metaverse?
It will provide analytics for educators to help tailor student learning. Educators can use data about student learning from metaverse education to tailor instruction to students and identify where students might need extra help.
4 Ways the Metaverse Will Change Education
Without a doubt, a world opens up where there is a lot of money for the metaverse. Years ago, that money was mostly confined to the realms of science fiction movies, television, and books, but science fiction isn’t fiction anymore. Can we talk about metaverse work? Or from the metaverse school? What can we expect?
There is talk of the metaverse becoming an $800 billion industry by 2024, so there is no better time than the present to explain what this emerging technology is and what it can mean for us and future generations on the frontier. of this digital space.
It’s good to explain the metaverse as if we were 6-year-olds
Keep in mind that there is more than one definition, because the idea itself is still being developed, but this seems to be a favorite: “it is a virtual world where you can play, work and learn”.
This is where it gets complicated. Until now, we’ve extensively used the internet to communicate or post content (think your social media feeds or messaging apps) in a way that’s been an extended (and much fancier) version of traditional media. Therefore, you can read the news online or send a meme to a friend instead of a card for his birthday. Your social networks have replaced the vacation photo album. Maybe you use the internet to buy a cool new pair of sneakers to wear on your awesome vacation and then post them on Instagram.
In the metaverse, the boundary between the physical word and the virtual world might not be so clear. Favorite band playing on the other side of the country? You can go to the virtual version, wearing his equally virtual band shirt. You can take a VR tour when you choose your vacation destination, use AR for a tour of historical sites while you’re there, and meet up with friends at a virtual cooking school when you get back.
The metaverse can include virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR), but you can also access it with your phone or game console. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) will have a big presence, which in turn work with the blockchain. A non-fungible token (NFT) is a cryptographic asset that has the ability to be unique and unrepeatable. Thanks to blockchain technology, the properties of this type of token can be stored and, in this way, it becomes possible to certify both the originality of the asset and its ownership.
How are universities using the metaverse?
The Metaverse removed physical barriers by ensuring that all students, even those in the least accessible parts of the world, can access quality higher education by becoming part of university innovation and immersive campus life.
What are the 3 technologies that will change the future of education?
To name a few, there are artificial intelligence (AI), Learning Management Systems (LMS), augmented and virtual reality, gamification, and blockchain.
Is the metaverse the future of education?
The metaverse, a 3D digital space mixed with the real world and the virtual world, has been heralded as a future education trend with great potential.
Mix of the real and virtual world
The metaverse in education is a proposal that is being made at all educational levels. For this reason, its definition is very important, which is the framework for action, as well as its characteristics, as well as its possible applications, challenges and future research topics.
The declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic forced humanity to rethink how we teach and learn. The metaverse, a 3D digital space mixed with the real world and the virtual world, has been heralded as a future education trend with great potential. However, as an emerging element, the existing study rarely discussed the metaverse from the perspective of education.
Therefore, the following aspects must be taken into account:
– The views of the metaverse, including its origin, definitions and shared characteristics.
– Clearly define the metaverse in education and propose a detailed framework of the metaverse in education, along with detailed discussions of its characteristics.
– Blended learning.
– Language learning.
– Education based on competencies.
– Inclusive education.
Definition, framework and characteristics of the metaverse in education
As indicated by scholars, education is one of the most important applications of the metaverse with great potential in the near future. It is believed that the presence of the metaverse can serve as a new educational environment:
– It can be considered as an educational environment enhanced by technologies related to the metaverse that merge with the elements of the virtual and real educational environment.
– Allows students to use portable devices to enter the educational environment without being limited by time and location and allows them to use digital identities to have real-time interactions with different forms of elements (for example, avatars, intelligent NPCs or resources of virtual learning).
– They can feel present as if they were in a real world educational environment.
Experiential obstacles are unlocked
From this point of view, it can be seen that the application of the metaverse in education can unlock a variety of fantastic learning experiences for students. The framework that is required is one that has potential core pillars, including hardware, computing, networks, virtual platforms, exchange tools and standards, payment service, content, service, and assets.
There are also three other essential components (ie, hardware, software, and content) and three approaches (ie, user interaction, implementation, and application) to the metaverse in a general sense to consider.
Another way to look at the metaverse in education is by discussing the roles (i.e., smart tutors, smart learners, and smart peers) in educational service delivery and the potential applications of the metaverse for educational settings from an AI perspective.
The metaverse integrates with massive technologies
However, the metaverse is not developed with unique technologies, such as AI, but instead integrates with massive technologies. Considering the few studies that have discussed the metaverse for educational purposes, therefore, according to the views collected in the research papers to date, it is required that there is a framework for the metaverse in education, especially for our postgraduate business training sector.
At first glance, the metaverse arises precisely because of the maturity of technologies, that is, the realization of the metaverse in education depends a lot on updated technologies. Thus, a range of technologies can become the metaverse infrastructure in education, which is responsible for providing great support for components in both the real world and the metaverse world.
Ivy League B-School Launches First of Its Kind Metaverse Program
The digital landscape is becoming an all-encompassing reality; in fact, Fortune 500 investment bank Citi projects that the metaverse could be worth as much as $13 billion by 2023. To keep up with this evolving technology, the Wharton University School of Pennsylvania recently announced it will launch a six-week certification program in this immersive virtual world.
The announcement makes Wharton, which Fortune says has the third full-time MBA program in the United States, the first Ivy League business school to launch a course on the metaverse. Wharton developed the new online certificate program, Business in the Metaverse Economy, with economic consulting firm Prysm Group, and is designed for business and technology professionals seeking to learn about metaverse technologies, development, and the economic value of the new market.
“Between the interest in these technologies expressed by companies and recent advances in the metaverse-enabling technologies themselves, such as consumer-facing [virtual reality] headsets, we believe now is the right time to make sense of these trends.” , Cathy Barrera, a founding economist at Prysm Group and industry leader for the program, stating that “this course is aimed at executives to help them determine how adopting these technologies can add value to their businesses.”
Some Fortune 500 companies have already started making their way into the metaverse. For example, the consumer goods company Procter & Gamble has begun to use new technology to interact with potential customers.
“Among Fortune 500 companies, some may benefit from using metaverse technologies such as [augmented reality] to improve efficiencies in their manufacturing processes; others may use the metaverse [virtual reality] to facilitate remote collaboration; others may use virtual worlds to reach retail customers and build brand loyalty,” says Barrera.
What to expect from the Wharton certification program
The online program takes six weeks to complete and includes six industry case studies and more than 50 lectures by Wharton faculty and industry experts. It is aimed at business professionals and executives from a “range of backgrounds, including finance, management and technology,” explains Kevin Werbach, a Wharton professor and academic director of the program.
“Executives must be prepared to adopt the technologies that will be relevant to them in order to remain competitive,” Barrera adds. “They also need to be able to discern which opportunities have the potential to add real value.”
The program is asynchronous and can be completed at your own pace. It also includes group discussions, weekly office hours with instructors, a capstone project, and networking events. The time commitment per week during the program is approximately eight to ten hours, and the program costs $4,500 to attend.
Are you ready for the metaverse as it will transform business, education, and humanity itself for better or worse?
While it may be five years before we have a smooth experience of our real world and the metaverse, we’ll already be living, learning, connecting, creating, and playing long before then.
Imagine if you could go back to 1995, the beginning of the Internet, before the world’s biggest companies were born. What would you do different?
Right now, we are on the verge of another pivotal moment in the history of technology, the next frontier in online interaction. Something bigger than the internet is coming and it will end the internet as we know it: the metaverse.
What exactly do we mean by the term “metaverse”?
In essence, the metaverse is an immersive 3D virtual world that mirrors our world and will replace the 2D search-based Internet. The metaverse will completely change the way we live, learn, earn, and connect.
And, just like the Internet 25 years ago, this new technology is coming much faster than we think. Guess what’s leading the way? Gaming.
Let’s look at Fortnite as an example. In just three years it has attracted 350 million gamers who spend more than 3 billion hours a month in this virtual world.
Now, imagine a world like this connected to our real world. One where you can meet up, shop, go to school, play games, be creative, be whoever you want to be, all while teleporting and time traveling wherever you want to go. This is the metaverse.
Fortnite creator Tim Sweeney knows he’s not alone in the race to become the world’s next biggest and most influential tech platform.
When asked in December 2019 on Twitter if he viewed Fortnite as a game or a platform, Tim Sweeney responded:
“Fortnite is a game. But ask that question again in 12 months.”
Just over a year later, Fortnite, at its current level of growth, is on track to hit 1 billion players in three years.
Meanwhile, another billion-strong tech company is heading into the metaverse. Enter Facebook Horizon, a user-generated virtual reality world. While Fortnite is a 3D game played on a 2D screen, Facebook’s Horizon is experienced in 3D virtual reality. Think of it like first-person Sims where you can create your own virtual word, meet up, socialize, share experiences, play games, and even work together. As the metaverse takes over the internet, Facebook Horizon will take over the 2-D Facebook we use today.
Business and the way we learn will be transformed
The metaverse will not only transform online marketing as we know it (as it did with social media 15 years ago), but the way we do business, learn, socialize, and life as we know it will be revolutionized.
Markets, entire economies and even entire countries will grow in this virtual world.
When will this happen?
As with all new technology, it happens when three key things come together. These are: demand, software and hardware.
In fact, we’ve already reached a critical mass of demand from the metaverse. When the internet hit the mainstream in the 1990s, there were only 14 million people online at the time. Today, there are already 2.5 billion gamers online who experience the virtual world every day. The global gaming industry was valued at $150 billion in 2021. Compared to just $41 billion for the entire movie industry.
Apparently, our virtual selves are already ready and waiting for the metaverse.
Software
This is also here right now. While the Internet relied on code to create websites, the metaverse is built with engines that create a three-dimensional world. The two biggest are Unreal Engine and Unity, which are already multi-billion dollar toolkits.
Tim Sweeney, founder of Epic Games and Fortnite, is also the creator of Unreal Engine. Unreal has not only been used to create games like Fortnite, but also games like Final Fantasy, Microsoft’s Gears of War, and many of the best Xbox and PlayStation games. It is also increasingly being used in the film industry to create hyper-realistic special effects scenes.
While the Unity engine is what is used to build Facebook Horizon and is the engine that League of Legends, Pokémon Go and many AR and VR games are based on.
It seems that Unity and Unreal Engine are the equivalent metaverse of Android and IOS.
In December 2020, Epic Games closed a $1.8 billion funding round, valuing the company at $17 billion. The deal included a $250 billion investment from Sony that the PlayStation maker said would expand their collaboration ahead of the PS5’s launch. Epic wants to use the new funding to play a leading role in the metaverse for new kinds of entertainment and social experiences.
If they achieve this vision, their market could grow from the entire global gaming community to the entire global Internet-connected population.
Meanwhile, Unity is expected to go public later this year. This would capitalize on its tremendous growth in mobile apps and drive expansion into markets much larger than gaming alone.
There are other worlds to be found in the metaverse that are creating their own engines. Examples of these include Minecraft, which has 480 million players, Roblox, which has 160 million players, and Crossfire, with over 1 billion players.
Demand and software tools are now available for the metaverse
Let’s take a moment to imagine how this metaverse will end with the Internet as we know it. Just think, no more googling because we’ll have our own virtual assistants doing the searching for us. Keyboards will disappear and we will walk and talk like in the real world. We will have to forget about the applications, since we will only travel from one world to another. Screen time will be a thing of the past, as we’ll simply be accessing the metaverse via actual word devices. No more storage by IP address, but by time and place in virtual reality.
In the next decade, for better or worse, this will be a reality.
The Internet and the mobile phone will be as much relics of tomorrow as newspapers and fax machines are today. How soon will this happen? This has everything to do with the hardware.
Hardware
As we see the metaverse emerge from the gaming market, players are accessing the virtual world in three main ways: via mobile devices, game consoles, and PC. All three are increasing in power and speed.
As 5G rolls out, it will boost mobile speeds up to 100 times 4G – fast enough to create a seamless link between our real world and the metaverse.
Companies are racing to come out with faster and cheaper handheld devices through which consumers can begin accessing the metaverse. From Facebook’s Oculus, Microsoft HoloLens, and PlayStaytionVR, those outdated VR goggles are now being replaced by smart glasses.
Facebook is set to launch smart glasses this year in collaboration with Rayban. Apple was expected to launch the Apple Glass AR glasses by 2022. And Amazon has already launched its Alexa-powered Amazon EchoFrames that are already offered, currently by invitation only.
While it may be five years before we have a fully seamless experience of our real world and the metaverse, we’ll already be living, learning, connecting, creating, and playing in it much sooner.
By 2024, we will spend more time in 3D virtual worlds than on today’s 2D internet.
Whether the metaverse will transform business, education, and humanity itself for better or worse remains to be seen.