Application of the Metaverse in Education

This book covers interesting topics of the metaverse in education. It introduces the metaverse as a new frontier for education and sheds light on broad views about education in the metaverse. It also highlights the design of metaverse world with showing examples of promising immersive environments. Therefore, this book can be of interest to a wide range of stakeholders, such as students, researchers, educators, instructional designers, school administrators, and educational technology specialists.

This book demonstrates the research efforts and best practices for readers where immersive digital experiences meet the pedagogical landscape. It explores the ground-breaking impact of the metaverse on educational practices.

The chapters focus on and answer the questions of how researchers and educators apply metaverse applications in education, what the challenges of adopting the metaverse in education are, and what are the future opportunities for promoting the metaverse in education.

Dr. Dejian Liu is Senior Engineer, graduated from the University of Kansas, the United States of America, and received a Ph.D. degree from Beijing Normal University, China, in 2020. Currently working as Chairman and Executive Director at NetDragon Websoft. He also serves on the Board of Directors at Fujian TQ Digital Incorporation, on the Board at Baidu, and as Member of the Standing Committee at Fujian Science Association. As Vice Chairman of the Fujian Young Entrepreneur Association, he has received numerous awards, including Business Venture Hero award, Excellent Entrepreneur award, Youth Entrepreneurship Achievement award, and Science and Technology for Young People award.

Dr. Ronghuai Huang is Professor in the Faculty of Education of Beijing Normal University (BNU), China. He has been engaged in research on smart learning environment, artificial intelligence in education, educational technology as well as knowledge engineering. He received the ’Chang Jiang Scholar’ award in 2016, which is the highest academic award presented to an individual in higher education by the Ministry of Education of China. He serves as Co-dean of the Smart Learning Institute, Director of UNESCO International Rural Educational and Training Center, and Director of China National Engineering Lab for Cyberlearning Intelligent Technology. He is also President of The Global Chinese Society for Computers in Education, Vice President of International Association of Smart Learning Environments, and Editor-in-Chief of Springer’s journal of Smart Learning Environments and Journal of Computers in Education. To date, he has accomplished/is working on over 100 projects, and his ideas have been widely spread, with about 400 academic papers and over 40 books published at home and aboard.

Dr. Ahmed Hosny Saleh Metwally is a postdoctoral researcher at Beijing Normal University, China, and a visiting scholar at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He obtained his Ph.D. in Educational Technology from Northeast Normal University, China. He has been working on different research areas in Technology-Enhanced Learning, including gamification, instructional design, metaverse, human-computer interaction, and artificial intelligence (AI). He serves as the managing editor of the IEEE Bulletin of the Technical Committee on Learning Technology (TCLC), and an editorial board member of Educational Technology & Society Journal. He is a member of SLIBNU-ALECSO Joint Lab (jointly found between the Smart Learning Institute Beijing Normal University and The Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (ALECSO)). He has been hosting the international webinar series ’Metaverse in Education’ curated by the Smart Learning Institute of Beijing Normal University.

Dr. Ahmed Tlili is an associate professor at Beijing Normal University, China, and An-Najah National University, Palestine. He is also a visiting professor at the Research Institute for Innovation and Technology in Education (UNIR iTED), Spain. He serves as the co-director of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Lab at the Smart Learning Institute of Beijing Normal University (SLIBNU), China. He is an editor of the Springer book series ’Future Education and Learning Spaces: ICT & Education in Uncertain Times’. He is also an associate editor of Smart Learning Environments, the IEEE Bulletin of the Technical Committee on Learning Technology, and the Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society.

Ms. Emma Fan Lin received her Master’s degree of International Comparative Law from Indiana University in the United States of America, and a Bachelor degree from Huaqiao University in China. Her research interest mainly focuses on technology industry combined with education, digital education, metaverse, mixed realities, smart learning environment, teacher information and communications technology (ICT) competency development. She is responsible for the Strategic Department of NetDragon Websoft, which is deepening the combination of education with cutting-edge technologies such as 3D, metaverse, virtual reality, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence. She is a co-project director and co-designer of UNESCO E-Library platform for teachers. The platform represents a hub of digital resources and provides training for global teachers, to boost teacher ICT competency development.