by CLAIRE FIELD

the investment made in digital education during COVID needs to be the starting point for more, and more sophisticated, online learning

A column on “education in the metaverse” might sound like I am spruiking for Facebook. To be clear I am not, and the concept of the metaverse stretches well beyond Facebook’s rebrand as Meta.

In fact the advent of web3/the metaverse is something that educators in both higher education and VET are going to need to start seriously thinking about.

A report last week from Citibank defines the metaverse as possibly, “the next generation of the internet – combining the physical and digital world in a persistent and immersive manner.” The authors suggest that a “device-agnostic metaverse accessible via PCs, game consoles, and smart phones” could result in new and enhanced ways to undertake “all of our current activities, including commerce, entertainment and media, education and training, manufacturing …”

With Australian adolescents reporting spending 7.5 hours per day on digital devices, most commonly smart phones and laptops or tablets, we need to understand that the investment made in digital education during COVID needs to be the starting point for more, and more sophisticated, online learning.

In the same way that teenagers live increasingly digital lives while still engaging in the real world, I think it is inevitable that these learners will expect their tertiary education to reflect the level of digital sophistication available to them in other aspects of their lives.

As debate continues about whether students want on-campus or https://campusmorningmail.com.au/news/on-line-and-or-in-person-what-students-want-is-good-teaching/ good on-line delivery, we need to keep in mind that pre-pandemic the number of students turning up to lectures on campus was in decline. It seems likely that many students yearning for on-campus tuition will fairly soon shift back to pre-pandemic modes of attendance.

The issue we face is not on-line versus on-campus teaching. It is how to deliver quality education to increasingly digitally sophisticated students. While predominantly text-based and video lessons delivered on-line were accepted during the pandemic – they will not suffice in the future.

Well-designed hybrid learning which offers engaging content, both on-line and face-to-face, and which is built on advances in learning and assessment design which improve learning outcomes are the future which institutions need to be building for now.

 Claire Field is an adviser to the tertiary education sector