Metaverse: A Potential Virtual-Physical Ecosystem for Innovative Blended Education and Training

Abstract

Recently online education has become quite popular, especially during the recent COVID-19 pandemic situations when mostly few remote synchronous S/W platforms were usually used across the globe. However, those platforms cannot replicate the physical classroom/training room environments and lack to provide hands-on support for laboratories or corporate development centers. Again, Metaverse has recently emerged as a useful platform for various types of useful applications. Metaverse has attracted the academic community for some time and this can be well utilized in education and training. Digital Twins (DT) can help in implementing the ideas and concepts of the natural/physical world in Metaverse-based education to make education more realistic and user-friendly. No work or literature review, to the best of the knowledge, of the author, is available that has considered the application of metaverse in training or developing skills for industry professionals along with academics in a holistic manner through an integrated environment. This paper aims to explore the potential of Metaverse for the development of an innovative virtual-physical blended teaching-learning. The objective is to overcome the limitations of current online and physical (offline) education and training systems of both academics and the corporate world.