The Metaverse – The Next Big Thing in Education: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Metaverse utilization in education is an area with a huge potential of development during the current age of technology innovation. Using a PRISMA-adapted methodology, we performed a qualitative systematic literature review of the main scientific production related to metaverse in education. We analyzed 48 academic papers and formulate six research questions. We discovered that, despite fertile, the research area is in its early stages of development and there is a need for more quantitative analyses. We grouped the paper keywords into five categories, which are virtualization, education, technology, library, research and others, and identified seven major themes from the findings of the papers: (i) the place of the metaverse in education in general, (ii) the possible implementations of the metaverse into different courses, (iii) the direct instructional support of the metaverse in education, (iv) the indirect instructional support of the metaverse in education, (v) the variables/conditions of a successful metaverse implementation in education, (vi) the possible challenges of metaverse in education, (vii) encouraging research regarding metaverse in education. Finally, we proposed a more comprehensive definition for the metaverse, discussed potential extensions of metaverse in education and possible threats, and presented the main implications from research, policy and practical perspectives.