Context

Modes of teaching delivery have undergone a significant transformation in recent years, catalysed by the COVID-19 pandemic, which compelled all levels of education, including universities, to adopt online teaching methods (Hodges et al., 2020; UNESCO, 2020). The post-pandemic landscape is profoundly different, and hybrid teaching models are increasingly common, even for full-residency courses. 

As technology accelerates, a third modality of synchronous learning beyond in-person and video conferencing has emerged: the metaverse. The metaverse, a term coined by science fiction writer Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel ‘Snow Crash’, describes a post-reality virtual world inhabited by avatars of real people (Stephenson, 1992b). 

No longer fictional, this nascent technology, which evolved from online multi-player gaming, represents the evolution of the internet, navigable in three dimensions (Dwivedi et al, 2022). Key features of the metaverse include its immersive, collaborative, and interactive nature, which holds potential for work, education, social connection, and commerce (Chen et al, 2022). 

While the metaverse can be accessed much like a traditional video game on a computer desktop or smartphone, it can also incorporate augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to offer enhanced levels of immersion with VR headsets (ibid). Belief in the metaverse as the future of the internet has seen significant investment from technology giants like Facebook, which changed its name to ‘Meta’ in October 2021, as well as Microsoft, Roblox, and Epic (Çengel and Yıldız, E. P., 2022)

The metaverse is the overarching term for the growing number of virtual platforms with varying degrees of Web3 integration. Three key features of true metaverse platforms, such as Sandbox and Decentraland, include decentralisation, which shifts power towards users and enables them to buy and create assets. These worlds are designed to persist and endure, existing in parallel to the real world. Some run on blockchain and use cryptocurrencies. The environment is shared between users who can interact with each other as new identities (Chen et al, 2023). Interoperability, enabling users to teleport between platforms as their avatar, has been achieved in practice, with Spatial and Decentraland partnering for Metaverse Fashion Week in 2023 (Hirschmiller, 2023). 

Experiential education and student engagement represent the main sources of student attraction and retention in post-secondary environments (Peisachovich et al., 2021).

With the increasing popularity of online learning, educators and institutions are seeking ways to make distance learning more engaging and interactive (Çengel & Yıldız, 2022). The metaverse is expected to deliver gameful experiences for sustainable learning (Park & Kim, 2022). The relationship between gameful experience and learning motivation has been examined through analysis of previous studies, with the metaverse identified as a medium capable of delivering such experiences (Park & Kim, 2022). 

Education in the metaverse, named by researchers ‘Edu-Metaverse’, is considered a future trend in teaching and learning. It has attracted interest because traditional barriers, such as time, space, cost, danger, or physical materials, can be overcome (Chen et al., 2023). Furthermore, researchers believe that the metaverse can help address discrimination and social inequalities such as those based on country, appearance, gender, and skin colour (Dwivedi et al., 2022). 

This raises questions about the lived student experience in the metaverse, as well as about participatory access and voice in digitally mediated and immersive learning environments. Innovation carries ethical responsibility, and research is needed to investigate justice issues around who can participate, express themselves, and exercise agency in learning spaces as teaching shifts from familiar online platforms to immersive metaverse environments. 

This study views Edu-Metaverse through the lens of transformational action research to address the following aim and research questions: 

Aim:

To critically explore how teaching across in-person, online, and Metaverse environments impacts student access, engagement, and sense of belonging, with a focus on identifying equity issues and proposing design improvements that support inclusive learning practice.

Research Questions:

1. What differences, if any, do students perceive in their learning experience and engagement across online and Metaverse sessions covering equivalent content?
2. How does the sense of belonging and inclusion compare across online and Metaverse classrooms?
3. How do students experience barriers to access differently in online and Metaverse teaching environments?