New in Bentley University's Undergraduate Core: "Living in the Metaverse"
Grush: Is your course also going to produce sustainable skills that will benefit the students, ultimately, as they reach the marketplace or go into graduate research?
Yates: The overarching goal of the Falcon Discovery Seminar is to introduce incoming college students to university-level research and get them to think about a complex problem from different perspectives. In our course, the study of the metaverse is the theme around which they conduct their research.
Frydenberg: Leaning into this sort of research is often challenging for first-year students. However, the skills that students learn and develop will carry forward into more advanced courses at Bentley and eventually into their jobs and careers, or graduate education if they pursue it.
The skills that students learn and develop will carry forward into more advanced courses at Bentley and eventually into their jobs and careers, or graduate education if they pursue it.
Grush: Can you offer a couple more practical examples of student learning, maybe focusing on the technology environment a bit more?
Yates: In addition to a research paper, we combine many interactive small group in-class activities along with opportunities to experience virtual reality hands on. We want students to be able to describe the technologies needed for the continued development of the metaverse; identify key companies and innovators whose work is influencing the metaverse; and create digital artifacts — avatars, virtual spaces, and various digital properties they can use when they explore immersive environments. We want them to reflect on what it's like to be a consumer or a citizen in an immersive, virtual experience and compare this with similar in-person experiences.
Frydenberg: And we want students not only to talk about the characteristics of the metaverse based on readings, but also to present their knowledge of the metaverse based on their own first-hand explorations with VR headsets.
We've created several experiential assignments for students to learn about the metaverse and apply the concepts they learn from their readings. For example, after reading about the characteristics of the metaverse, their first assignment is to visit the website for Decentraland, an open-source metaverse environment, and look around. They create slides showing features of the metaverse described in their readings and implemented in Decentraland. Students take screenshots of virtual marketplaces, meeting places, maps, and museums, and they describe how these exemplify characteristics of the metaverse.
In a second assignment, students enhance virtual reality scenes that are part of the Roblox gaming metaverse. And in a third assignment, they wear VR headsets to attend a virtual event in the AltspaceVR community-based metaverse — after which they write a reflection essay on the experience. Then, the culminating activity for the course is to hold a meeting in an immersive learning space.
Grush: Are the technologies easily accessible for students? I hope there isn't a 'metaverse divide'!
Yates: Many metaverse applications are available for free to explore through a browser. The expense comes with purchasing VR headsets, which may cost about $300 each. But we have some VR headsets already, and we've borrowed a few more on campus for use in this course.
Frydenberg: We built an immersive learning space based on Bentley's CIS Sandbox physical learning space, using the Frame platform. We hold one of our classes in this virtual space during the semester. Frame allows students to gather online either while wearing headsets or from a browser, so it serves as a virtual conferencing platform. Similar to Zoom, participants can hear each other, chat, and view shared screens. But in VR, they see avatars in their locations in the room instead of faces in a grid; they can relate their digital environment to a familiar physical one and navigate from one part of the room to another to interact with other students online.