CoinShots Logo
Metaverse Increasingly Being Used For Education In Hiroshima
The use of the metaverse is expanding as part of classes and extracurricular activities of universities in the city of Hiroshima.
Himanshu S.
12:04 30th Jan, 2023
Metaverse

By creating an avatar to represent yourself, it is possible communicate with others far away as if you are close together.

It also gives you the ability to look however you want, and move away from genders and attributes.

It has the potential for new uses, including giving children absent from school a virtual gathering place.

Supporting children absent from school

“While being absent from school, I didn’t have the opportunity to speak with people other than my family, and I was spending days feeling distressed and depressed,” said a 16-year-old first-year high school student from Hiroshima who goes by the name of Noa.

But things changed, as she took part in a program held last fall in a metaverse setting to support those absent from school. “I could spend quality time while feeling relaxed,” she said.

A local group organized the program to make a place for such students, and three people ultimately attended.

Noa entered a virtual reality environment by creating a female avatar with cat ears, and then traveled with other participants and listened to a high school student talking about the experience of being absent from school.

People who become nervous while being with others in a real environment can reduce psychological barriers of speaking with other people in a virtual environment as they don’t have to worry about each other’s faces or looks.

“Students who were silent at first could make a presentation on a (virtual) stage in the end,” said Kenichi Okamura, 23, head of the group that organized the program. “I really felt the potential of the metaverse.”

To cope with the increase of students being absent from school in recent years, the board of education of Hiroshima Prefecture introduced metaverse-related activities in collaboration with Tokyo-based nonprofit organization Katariba as one of the learning options for such students.

The board of education’s center that supports such students hopes it will lead to giving students a diverse education by offering opportunities that match each of the students’ areas of interest.

Expanding chances to meet others

“Everyone, let’s get together and take a picture.”

Eight members of HIT Metaverse, a students’ club at Hiroshima Institute of Technology in Hiroshima’s Saeki Ward, were enjoying taking pictures under a cherry tree in a metaverse environment.

The students, from different places in the university campus or at home, wore virtual-reality goggles and met in the metaverse.

Each of them showed their own avatar on the screen, speaking and socializing with one another.

Yosuke Tanaka, 19, a first-year student at the university and head of the club, said, “What is fascinating about the metaverse is that you can get to know people without being constrained by where they belong or how they look.”

When he was a third-year high school student, a person who he met in the metaverse suggested that he launch a club after getting into college. He established the club immediately after he joined the university last spring. The club currently has roughly 20 members.

Tanaka uses a female avatar character named Ramune to represent himself in the metaverse.

He also focuses on interacting with similar clubs at other universities, such as communicating with a metaverse club at Hokkaido University and making a presentation at an event organized by a VR club from the University of Tokyo.

“We hope to expand our activities so that many people will become familiar (with the metaverse),” Tanaka said.

Metaverse in classes

The metaverse is being used for university classes as well.

Hiroaki Kanoe, a professor of science education at Hijiyama University in Hiroshima’s Higashi Ward, held parts of some classes in the metaverse last year.

“By looking ahead with neofuturistic perspectives, I wanted to try and see how the classes can be expanded,” Kanoe said.

He held the virtual seminars for third-year students hoping to become teachers and asked them how the metaverse can be utilized in education.

Students actively debated possible uses of the technology, offering opinions such as having a metaverse environment open during summer holidays in order to help reduce student absences, or using the metaverse to help lower the psychological hurdles of giving presentations in front of a large audience.

Soko Hamaen, 21, a third-year student who attended a class in the metaverse, said, “Compared with online classes, you can feel the presence of others as if you are in a classroom.”

Kanoe said, “the greatest merit is that learners can feel it is interesting.”

“I hope to explore the uses of the metaverse while making clear the purpose of what to do with the technology, instead of jumping at it only because it is new.”

Some forecasts show that 1 billion people worldwide will take part in metaverse-related activities within the next decade, and the global market for the technology will expand to around ¥100 trillion by 2030.

At the same time, as more people use virtual space, antisocial behavior — including verbal sexual abuse — is increasing, indicating the need to create rules so that everyone can feel safe in the virtual environment.

Source



CoinShots Logo

Services

Social

Get in touch:

© 2024 Coinshots (AtlasZero LLC). All rights reserved.