Motivation
Over 30 years of adopting Internet-based learning as the dominant education tool, technologies have offered huge benefits in improving the quality of teaching and learning. Metaverse, as the technology of future, has gained enormous attention from both industry and academic communities since Facebook significantly invested in the technology and rebranded their corporation to Meta in 2021. The evolutional technology has shown great potential to dramatically change the landscapes of various domains in modern society including education. Metaverse is capable of providing highly immersive, interactive and intelligent educational environments. However, still in its early phase of development, Metaverse inherits all limitations of the underlying technologies which need to be addressed properly. Fortunately, Artificial Intelligence would be the solution for various challenges within Metaverse. Firstly, AI provides appropriate mechanisms to automatically and smartly generate huge volume of content which is distributed and served for a massive population of learners and teachers. Secondly, AI would be ideal tool to create intelligent Non-Player Characters (NPCs) and provide governance functionalities of an educational technology platform. Lastly, AI promotes personalization, which in turn improves student engagement and learning outcomes. The research project aims to provide an educational technology platform which integrates both Metaverse and AI. Billions of digital native learners would benefit from our novel educational technology platform for their activities within and outside classrooms. Furthermore, the platform would bring high quality education to the students of developing regions.
Introduction
In modern society, young generations are accustomed to the presence of technological advancement in all aspects of their daily lives. Future citizens use Internet-based technologies such as mobile apps and online videos to develop their own learning within and outside classrooms. Along with the evolution of technology, the concept of Massive Open Online Course Platform has developed through multiple stages to provide high quality education to anyone in the entire world.
Metaverse has come out from science fiction (Stephenson, 1994) and has become an evolutionary technology to dramatically change the landscapes of various domains. The concepts of Metaverse were described more vividly in great detail in the movie Ready Player One in 2018 by the famous director Steven Spielberg.
To bring the technology to life, Metaverse is founded on many emerging underlying technologies including Interactivity, Digital Twin, Blockchain, AI, Ubiquitous Computing and Networking.
Metaverse provides immersive, interactive, intelligent, and social environments which simulate many human senses such as vision, hearing and touching. These characteristics make the technology suitable to create virtual worlds which reflect various real-life activities in the physical world.
As one of the most promising areas of applications, Education would benefit vastly from the Metaverse technology as Metaverse’s usability aligns with educational activities.
Metaverse creates virtual environments for the students to immerse in 3D classrooms and enjoy audiovisual effects while obtaining knowledge and conveniently socializing with peers and teachers. Metaverse offers huge benefits in various aspects of learning and teaching.
The technology provides automatic assessment and improves the accuracy and effectiveness of evaluation process. Students can easily create personalized learning plans and customize their curricula and course contents which suit their own preferences.
With the support of augmented reality and improved communication, collaboration between the participants would be conducted more conveniently and effectively. The resources of a high-quality education system could be easily accessed from a wide range of users.
The innovative educational platform would provide better governance and prevent the users from committing unethical activities or behaviors. Metaverse can provide educational environments which are not possible in the real world and significantly reduce costs for many domains.
With these viable advantages, Metaverse would define the way we teach and learn in the future.
Research Questions
- RQ1: Which are the suitable techniques to enable personalised learning in higher education?
- RQ2: How can personalised learning improve academic performance and learning efficiency of educational platforms?
- RQ3: What is the impact of visualization of complex concepts using Metaverse for personalised learning?
- RQ4: What is the impact AI-enabled automation for personalised teaching and learning tasks?
Research Outcomes
- Outcome 1: The project would create a novel Ed Tech platform which integrates both emerging technologies Metaverse and Artificial Intelligence to provide immersive and personalized experience to a huge population of learners and teachers.
- Outcome 2: The platform would be applicable to distribute to many educational institutions globally to enhance the quality of education in both developed and developing regions.
- Outcome 3: One expected outcome is a PhD thesis to provide guidelines of framework and prototype for the next generation educational platform.
Conclusion
The research proposal aims to integrate Metaverse and Artificial Intelligence to create a next-generation educational platform. This platform will provide immersive, interactive, and personalized learning experiences, benefiting learners and educators worldwide.