The metaverse is upon us. Soon it will be as omnipresent as TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook (now Meta). As technology advances to bring us new immersive and imaginary worlds, how we educate children and prepare teachers must also advance to meet these new opportunities. When education lags the digital leaps, the technology rather than educators defines what counts as educational opportunity. This is largely what happened with the introduction of “educational” apps designed to be used on smartphones and tablets meant for adults. Today, as the metaverse infrastructure is still under construction, researchers, educators, policymakers, and digital designers have a chance to lead the way rather than get caught in the undertow. To leverage the potential of the metaverse as a 3D, global, interconnected, immersive, and real-time online space, we need new ways to connect the physical world with augmented and virtual reality (VR) experiences.
In this policy brief, we offer a path for bringing the best educational practices into the metaverse. We suggest a series of well-worn principles derived from the science of how and what children learn to guide the design of new educational technology. We also suggest ways in which design in this new space can go astray. In the end, we challenge those creating educational products for the metaverse to partner with educators and scientists to ensure that children experience real human social interaction as they navigate virtual spaces, children’s agency is supported as they explore these spaces, and there is a real eye to diversity in the representation and access to what is created.
A vision
Imagine a circular classroom, surrounded by white boards and populated with movable chairs. Energized students are mesmerized by the tales of the Greek myths, the power of Zeus the god of the sky, and stories of the great Hercules—his son—whose strength was legendary.
Suddenly, a timeline is projected onto the middle of the floor. Children whisk away their chairs to stand in the present, ready to move backward and descend into the year 300 BC—a year in which they will encounter a new reality. Carts buzz by them, traders in marketplaces surround them and high atop the hill, they see—with their own eyes—the temples of the gods and the people who worship them. They explore, they ask questions, they ponder, they learn!
The experience was designed to whet the appetite of the students, but questions remain: “How could we possibly know about the richness of Greek life? If we did not live there, how do we discover what was sold at the marketplace and which gods were all important?”
Then, the teacher positions each child on the timeline so that they return to the present. The walls around them turn to images of brown dust, in which they see ruined old temples and pieces of columns dotted along the ground. Each child is now given a chance to become the archeologist, to use her avatar to find the answers to the question of how we construct the past while nested squarely in the present. The avatars are equipped with a shovel, a brush, and are given a plot to till. The teacher continues, “The society that you witnessed, like all societies of times past, became buried in the dirt. Each layer of dirt is like a story book that you can uncover and piece together.” The children move their avatars and begin to examine the dirt in a new way—in a careful and inquisitive way. Each finds shards of pottery and even partial faces of statues that once stood tall. After 20 minutes of working the soil, they show their discoveries to the others in the class. Opportunities for collaborative learning and co-creation are embedded into the virtual and real learning spaces they have built together.
Piecing their shards together as if they were solving a historical puzzle, they find an urn and a statue. They learn that the myths are more than stories—they were part of a bygone religion called paganism that real people practiced during a time now buried beneath the earth’s surface. Archeologists like them helped to rediscover that society.
This deep, transferable learning that will last a lifetime comes to us by virtue of the metaverse delivered in a hybrid, guided play environment that could represent the school of the future. But notice that the interaction is inherently social with live people and live moment to moment, emotionally laden interactions. And notice that the teachers are still crucial to this experience. Make no mistake that the metaverse is coming. It is our job to specify how engagement in this always-on, virtual universe augments education rather than detracts from it, and how it can preserve the key socially interactive qualities that are core to how humans learn.
Defining the metaverse
Forbes Magazine offered varied definitions of the metaverse from tech leaders. Each speaks of a space that is a combination of virtual and live—creating a “third space,” as sociologist Ray Oldenburg noted, that is not home or work.
The metaverse of the future is likely to fully support augmented and virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and the connectivity to link all worlds. Indeed, in its most democratic instantiation, anyone will have the opportunity to create a space and be part of a user-generated global community on an interoperable multiplatform where they can share their games or goods with the world. The G5 internet speed should allow this to be a reality.
To date there are a few better established instantiations of what is to come, including the games Minecraft, Fortnite, and Roblox. Roblox, for example, offers a wealth of gaming opportunities and these games have attracted over 42 million active users, an increase of over 19 percent from 2019. And Roblox creators look to attract followers who will use and then heighten the visibility of any particular game.
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