Design heuristics for integrating the metaverse into hybrid higher education courses

The metaverse has become increasingly relevant in education; however, the lack of clear principles and guidelines for education researchers and practitioners has limited the design and development of metaverse-based learning experiences in higher education. In this conceptual paper, through a multi-step process including literature review, expert insights, illustrative use cases, and practical evaluation of metaverse platforms in situ, we derived three critical heuristics for metaverse hybrid learning systems design – (1) empathy-driven alignment with the metaverse’s affordances for hybrid learning; (2) designing a shared community for experiential and constructive learning in hybrid learning systems; and (3) innovative, creative, and responsible integration of the metaverse for sustainable and dynamic learning experiences. The original contributions of this paper include (1) identifying instructional design principles tailored to the unique affordances of the metaverse for hybrid courses in higher education, (2) highlighting the importance of distributed and embodied cognition with vicarious learning in metaverse-based learning, and (3) discussing the evolving role of the metaverse and associated competencies of designers’ creative approaches in shaping future educational practices. While conceptual in nature, this work provides a guiding account to support future research and practice in this rapidly evolving field.