The Metaverse Economy by Arunkumar Krishnakumar & Theodora Lau

Author:Arunkumar Krishnakumar & Theodora Lau
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kogan Page
Published: 2023-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Education

Most of us had a schooling experience where a number of students watched a teacher walk through a syllabus with chalk, a blackboard, and a projector. Or at best a PowerPoint presentation on a screen. What if we can reinvent the experience to make it more engaging?

Imagine a world where students could switch on their headsets, see their classmates next to them, and listen to the teachers as they walk them through their geography lessons, while being immersed under the Northern Lights, on top of Mount Everest, or in the ocean with a blue whale. AR in the education market is expected to reach $41.8 billion by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 77.2 percent over the period 2020–27.43 Startups such as zSpace, TutAR, and PlayShifu are working on education applications using VR and AR. Through the use of such technology, these edtech startups are able to virtually transport students back to 250 million years ago, show them what earth looked like back then and allow them to see dinosaurs walk around them; or bring the virtual Solar System into the classroom and provide them with an immersive experience with orbiters, landers, and rovers.

Other use cases include providing students with a realistic experience of looking into human anatomy. Teachers can zoom into parts of the human body, rotate them, provide different views, and resize them to help students take a closer look at human body parts. Imagine seeing the heart pumping blood right in front of your eyes, and the teacher explaining the mechanics of it all.

VR solutions within education can offer not only better learning experiences, but also more global experiences. Traditionally, a student completing an undergraduate degree at the University of Oxford must do so in person. What if students from villages in Asia and Africa can take these courses in the virtual classroom, with a similar level of personal interaction experience with cohorts and teachers? That would be a truly inclusive use case that breaks global barriers and offers a cost-effective way for those who otherwise do not have access to high-quality education. In fact, with MetaHKUST, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology plans to overcome geographical constraints by opening the world’s first physical–digital twin campuses in the metaverse, enabling students across borders to attend classes together.44

Similar technologies can also be deployed for workplace training, which can help to reduce cost and time, and improve job mobility for workers by providing more upskilling and reskilling opportunities. According to a report from CB Insights, Bank of America provided VR training to 50,000 employees across a variety of scenarios from fraud detection to customer management. And the effort resulted in four times the speed of learning compared to traditional environments.45

We are just scratching the surface with the potential of education technology. With more mainstream and cost-effective hardware, coupled with reliable and affordable internet around the world, crossing physical borders to educate oneself could be a thing of the past.

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