A Conversation about the Metaverse and Virtual Reality Language Learning

This week we were joined by Nergiz Kern with a fascinating chat about virtual reality. Nergiz is Head of Research at Immerse and investigates how VR can be used in immersive language teaching.  Back in 2008 after Nergiz did her DELTA, she explored online teaching and discovered EVO – Electronic Village Online, an association which has been running an online conference for ELT teachers since 2001. Through attending one of their sessions, she found out about a virtual world called Second Life which many teachers were using in language education. Second Life is an online environment you can create and use for teacher training, teaching, socialising, networking and more. To read more about Nergiz’s experience in this virtual world, you can check out her blog. Nergiz mentions that one of the appeals of Second Life for teachers was that they could create the environment they wanted and that rather than being a game, it was a space to use. That’s not to say that games can’t be used in a pedagogically sound way and Nergiz highlights that a vrtual world has quite a playful element as you can design your own avatar and it might have a more cartoon feel.

We chatted briefly as well about Minecraft, which is also an environment created by users and has been popular with many teachers for langauge and mainstream education. Minecraft has developed an educational version of the platform and Cambridge Assessment have also created some additional features within Minecraft to support English language learning.

Then we went on to talk about the metaverse, and Nergiz introduced the idea of Gartner’s hype cycle: when there’s a new piece of technology, there’s a period of hype and then a ‘trough of disillusionment’ – tools, devices and apps which survive this trough then become normalised. Nergiz says that virtual reality is now normalised in many areas outside of education, but it has also grown in use in education in recent years.

The metaverse is certainly nothing new but perhaps with the pandemic the hype is back, with companies investing heavily in VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality). However, Nergiz was quick to point out what the metaverse is not: it’s not virtual reality, although this is one way of accessing it. AR, which can be accessed through tablets and phones, is also part of the metaverse. And the metaverse is a single entity: an iteration of the internet, the internet as a 3D space.

This will happen gradually and nobody knows exactly what it will look like as yet. Although people have been researching it for the past couple of decades and there are hopes it will be a fully-developed reality in the next ten years, the development will take time – so we won’t suddenly wake up one morning in the metaverse.

“The Metaverse is a massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds which can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence, and with continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communications, and payments.”

This quote from Matthew Ball, which thankfully Nergiz explains in more detail around the 18-minute mark, is a concise definition of what the metaverse will be.

A very good question which Nergiz brought up is, “Why do we need to know about this as teachers?” And the answer is simple: this is going to become the internet and we won’t be able to avoid it. It’s not going to be another app or tool which you might not need to use, it will be unavoidable. This doesn’t mean that you need to devote all your waking hours to learning about it! But it can make teaching and learning more interesting.

Nergiz mentioned a pilot course which had been done with Japanese students by a teacher at the University of Sheffield who felt optimistic about his experience using VR in education. You can read about his experience here

When you hear VR, you might think of different things. For example, you can find 360º videos which are a form of VR and with Google goggles, you can access these environments in a cheap way. Nergiz shared some other hardware which people are using and also said that the tech is developing so that you no longer need to have hand-held controllers as cameras on the headset pick up your movements and transmit them to your avatar.

Currently, there isn’t a lot of VR in education. Second Life is still popular, and there are government- and EU-funded projects ongoing, but it takes time to develop your environment and onboard learners. The Google goggles and alternatives are popular and some have been designed with learning programs inbuilt so there’s no need for an internet connection with the headset. There’s also a company called ImmerseMe which is developing self-study language-learning programs through VR. There are some other environments which can be accessed for free, such as Mozilla Hubs and AltspaceVR

Immerse on the other hand is a teaching application in which there are different scenes a teacher can take their students to. But within each scene there are fixed and placeable objects, such as a board, and Immerse gives you the opportunity to monitor learners far more easily than on videoconferencing platforms as you can send learners to areas and thanks to spatial audio, you can hear them quietly from a distance or ‘physically’ move closer to them. However, you can also place learners on different audio channels to allow you to listen in on their conversations without interrupting them – a teacher’s dream! There’s also a feature which allows you to rally learners, i.e. bring them all back to focusing on you after an activity 😄

A further benefit is that lessons can be recorded and then viewed from different angles, enabling teachers to develop as they can focus on learner participation or motivation and really analyse moments of the lesson.

We went on to chat a little about the possibility of the introduction of VR and the metaverse widening the divide in education. Nergiz highlighted that there are some apps which can be used offline or which have a low data requirement. There are also options for the VR experience to be a part of the physical classroom so teachers could have a set of headsets and incorporate VR pair- or group-work as part of the lesson whilst other learners are completing a different task. It is also possible with some headsets to cast the experience to a screen so whilst a couple of learners might be experiencing VR, others can be involved and perhaps offering support. 

She highighted as well that many programmes can be accessed via different devices at the same time. So for example, a learner could access Immerse with a VR headset and interact with another learner who’s coming in via the desktop app.

A question came in about what we need to consider before adopting VR. Nergiz points out that there will be some training involved with teaching through VR, similarly to how you learnt to teach in the physical classroom or online. She’s also keen to point out that VR is an experiential platform and that you wouldn’t take your learners to this environment to lecture them on grammar. There should be active learning, with learners manipulating objects and actually doing things within the environment.

As with all tech, there will be some teething problems and you’ll need to help students with audio or other issues. It is also currently more difficult to write in the virtual environment, though there are developments happening in this aspect. With a desktop version you can type, but with an immersive VR experience, you would need to consider how to incorporate this skill into your lessons.

A couple of questions for you to consider:

  • How would you like to use VR in your lessons?
  • Would you prefer for it to be an element within the physical classroom or a fully remote lesson?

It was an incredibly enlightening session - my mind was blown by the possibilities! Huge thanks to Nergiz for the chat 😁

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