Exploring University Students’ Perceptions of Metaverse-Based Classroom in Foreign Language Pedagogy Course

Abstract

With the metaverse emerging as the next leap in the evolution of the Internet in the post-pandemic era, a wealth of opportunities are expected to emerge in the educational sector. As a pioneer study, this research project is aimed at exploring pedagogical values of the metaverse-based classroom in a university setting. The three research questions for this study are: 1) What are the levels of students’ overall satisfaction in metaverse-based classrooms? 2) What is the user experience of the metaverse platform? and 3) What are the strengths/weaknesses of the metaverse-based classroom as perceived by the students? Twenty university students took a foreign language pedagogy course on Gather.town in spring of 2022 for 11 weeks. Student questionnaire and focus-group interviews were conducted and data analysis revealed two major findings as follows: Firstly, both students’ overall satisfaction of the metaverse-based classroom and user experience of the metaverse platform were positive, excepting only instability problems caused by poor internet connections. Secondly, more perceived strengths than weaknesses were found of the newly adopted program: ‘a realistic classroom setting’ and ‘easy communication in multiple ways’ were mentioned as strengths while the main weakness was ‘newness.’ Pedagogical implications are discussed for teachers interested in adopting the metaverse platform for their future classrooms.