Revolutionizing education: The rise of virtual classrooms

Virtual classrooms are transforming traditional educational systems and creating new opportunities for access to education, increased flexibility, cost savings, improved collaboration and communication between teachers and students, as well as enhanced engagement in learning activities.

The world of education is changing rapidly, and with the introduction of Metaverse, there are new opportunities for educators and innovators to revolutionize the education sector. Metaverse classrooms offer an immersive virtual experience that can provide access to resources and materials that would otherwise be unavailable due to geographic or financial limitations.

We spoke to Yuvraj Krishan Sharma, Co-Founder & CPO of Edverse, to understand how it could shape the future of learning.

The development of Edverse

Edverse is a platform that allows teachers, students, and creators of educational content to come together in a virtual world called the metaverse. This new way of learning and teaching is becoming more popular and is seen as the future of education.  Edverse platform will allow for a new type of learning that is not limited by time, place, or the number of people involved. We are working with new technology like blockchain to make this possible and help schools in India become more digital and efficient.

With our platform, students can learn in virtual classrooms and explore different subjects and places more effectively. They can also meet and learn with other students from all over the world. Additionally, we aim to improve the efficiency of teachers and students in the classroom with the launch of our meta-classes. This will allow students to enter a virtual classroom as avatars and explore simulated environments, making their learning experience more immersive. This can include exploring a magnified human cell, studying stars from the moon's surface, and learning about sea creatures at the bottom of the ocean.

Challenges you encountered

One of the key technical challenges in creating a metaverse is the limited availability of skilled professionals specifically unity developers. Furthermore, there are challenges that have been encountered by developers when working with a metaverse platform including Scalability, Interoperability, Performance, Security, and Latency.

Scalability refers to the ability of the platform to handle a large number of users and a large amount of data, Interoperability refers to ensuring that different metaverse platforms can communicate and interact with each other, Performance is the speed and efficiency of the platform, Security the measures put in place to protect users' personal information and prevent unauthorized access and Latency the ability of the platform to handle real-time interactions.

To address these challenges, we are providing support to our developers with robust cloud-based infrastructure to increase scalability. We are using standard protocols to ensure interoperability, use performance optimization techniques to improve performance, security measures such as encryption and authentication to secure the platform, and low-latency tech to ensure real-time interactions.

Addressing online education challenges

In the education metaverse, to address the challenge of limited interaction, we have created an environment that mimics the traditional environment to cater to experiential learning in the basic unit of learning – A classroom.

One where learners and educators can break the barriers of education by entering 3D spaces in an avatar and learning inthe most immersed manner using 3D models from wherever they want. They get an opportunity to explore simulated environments, with multiple screens, and interact seamlessly.

Additionally, virtual labs with VR devices can be integrated at schools to provide opportunities for students to engageand learn in the most immersive way.

Ensuring privacy and security

Ensuring the privacy and security of student data in a metaverse environment is a critical concern. Our platform is built on Polygon, to help foster growth by providing an apt infrastructure for enabling a secure, tamper-proof way to store and share student data among authorized stakeholders while maintaining the student's privacy and control over their data. Additionally, we have also collaborated with the Elysium blockchain to power green NFTs.

Designing and implementing practical educational experiences

Designing educational experiences in the metaverse involves several steps: Defining learning objectives, choosing a suitable metaverse platform, creating educational content, designing the experience, implementing it, testing and refining, and evaluating.

This process may involve scripting or programming to create interactive elements like 3D models and integrate educational content into the metaverse environment. At Edverse we have created a repository of thousands of 3D content assets that can be accessed from the library for the educators to pick and start the teaching process in a fun and interactive way.

Tackling accessibility issues for students

This was the first thought that had come to mind as we created our metaverse - accessibility. To achieve the scale that we want, we needed to allow participation from across geographies and different strata of society. Knowing that VR adoption was limited, we created our complete metaverse experience through a web-based browser. Any laptop that can open chrome can access the education metaverse today.

The effectiveness of educational experiences in the metaverse

People learn in different ways. Some study well by listening to a teacher and others prefer to read content from a book. And there are even more who study by visualization. There is no single method of teaching. We believe that VR or metaverse experiences are just other forms of gaining knowledge by experiencing.

Having said that, the way to measure the effectiveness of something is with trials and assessments, and today there are thousands of studies already conducted by researchers across the globe which prove via tests that recall and learning are far higher than pen and paper or video-based learning!

Also, we know that long-term adoption of Edverse – the education metaverse will be from people in their teens to early 20s. Hence, the more exposure, training, and positive experiences the students, kids, and the education ecosystem will have, it is going to bring a revolutionary change in the familiarity and adoption of the technology.

Yuvraj Krishan Sharma, Co-Founder & CPO of Edverse