Exploring the Potential and Technical Challenges of Metaverse for University Education

As higher education increasingly shifts towards online learning, ensuring the effectiveness of these platforms is essential. Engaging and maintaining student focus are crucial factors for successful learning. The Metaverse, a Virtual Reality (VR) environment, offers an immersive platform that facilitates interaction, enabling users to meet virtually for purposes such as learning, working, and socializing. In this paper, we explore the potential of the Metaverse as a more interactive and engaging alternative to traditional video conferencing (VC) tools. An experiment was conducted with 24 university students who attended a university lecture in the Metaverse. Our findings suggest that, while technical issues significantly impacted user experience, participants who did not encounter such problems reported higher engagement and a more positive overall experience. The study highlights the promise of the Metaverse for enhancing student engagement, while underscoring the importance of addressing technical challenges to fully realize its potential as a learning platform.