New in Bentley University's Undergraduate Core: "Living in the Metaverse"
A Q&A with Mark Frydenberg and David Yates
Why is learning about the metaverse important to first-year college students? Here, two Bentley University faculty meet with CT to explain how their unique course offering on the metaverse supports the goals of the institution's new undergraduate core curriculum.
Mark Frydenberg is a senior lecturer, and David Yates is an associate professor of Computer Information Systems at Bentley. Together they've developed and are teaching "Living in the Metaverse" as a first-year seminar, as of this Fall 2022 semester.
Mary Grush: Bentley University recently revised its core undergraduate curriculum. Could you talk a little about that and how you arrived at teaching a course on Living in the Metaverse?
Mark Frydenberg: Bentley University is a business university in the Boston area. All students take a set of core business and liberal arts courses that give them the digital literacy, information literacy, problem solving, and teamwork skills they need to succeed in their chosen majors and minors. Our first-year seminar course was historically a one-credit course that supported incoming students during the first semester of their college experience. It focused on topics such as time management and study skills, how to use the library, where to find campus resources, and how to respect the diversity that students encounter when they acclimate to a new community.
As part of a university-wide curriculum revision, the first-year seminar course [now called the Falcon Discovery Seminar, or FDS, named after Bentley's mascot] has become a three-credit course that includes many of the original core topics while introducing students to the world of research and critical thinking on a "wicked problem" from multiple perspectives. Bentley offered more than 40 sections of FDS this fall, taught by faculty from across all disciplines. Each faculty member chose the theme for their own section.
The first-year seminar course has become a three-credit course that includes many of the original core topics while introducing students to the world of research and critical thinking on a "wicked problem" from multiple perspectives.
David Yates: Other FDS courses focused on problems of plastics in the environment and sustainability, genocide, big corporations in America, and how to live a good life. We chose Living in the Metaverse as our theme. The metaverse is a current topic with many angles that we hoped would resonate with our students.
Grush: First, let's just sum it up for the purposes of our discussion: What is the metaverse?
Frydenberg: The metaverse is a collection of immersive digital spaces, or "virtual worlds" where people can interact online. Many people consider the metaverse as part of Web3, or the next generation of the World Wide Web. If we remember how the original Web connected documents through hyperlinks, and how Web 2.0 connected people through shared social media and user-generated content, we can see that Web3 introduces blockchain, digital currencies, and other technologies to add value to digital content. The metaverse enables a new digital economy where people can create, purchase, or sell digital properties and goods. Inhabitants of the metaverse create digital identities in the form of avatars or digital twins that may mimic their 'real world' identities and establish norms for their digital communities.
The metaverse is not one unique virtual space; rather, there are different metaverses, each relying on different digital currencies or serving different communities. Meta Horizon Worlds, Roblox, Decentraland, and the Sandbox are all examples of metaverses that provide different experiences and opportunities for their users. Collectively, the metaverse is a growing market. Verified Market Research estimates the value of this sector at more than $800 billion by 2030.