Beyond Reality: Neoteria - Unleashing the Power of AI and VR in the Metaverse for Next-Gen Learning Adventures

Abstract

This project aims to establish 'Neoteria,' a metaverse city tailored for cross-disciplinary education in tourism, business, health, and engineering, symbolizing the next leap in interactive and immersive learning experiences. The educational landscape is rapidly evolving, driven by a growing demand for interactive and immersive learning experiences that transcend traditional classroom boundaries. The metaverse and virtual reality (VR) emerge as pivotal technologies, offering dynamic platforms where theoretical concepts can be visualized and explored in practical, simulated environments. These technologies promise to revolutionize education by providing students with engaging, lifelike experiences that enhance understanding and retention. However, integrating the metaverse and VR into educational frameworks presents significant challenges.

These include:

• The complexity of adopting new technologies, such as integrating dynamic AI-driven avatars,
• Aligning technology with sophisticated pedagogical approaches, where the technology require relevant features for demanding pedagogies such as problem-based learning that may require a diverse range of educational tasks and learning pathways,
• Ensuring sustained student engagement, where the same features must have varying sophistication and meet the learner’s expectations in both educational platforms and games,
• Bridging the skills gap among educators and learners, where managing and sustaining the learning intervention with limited technical dependencies, and
• Creating relevant, impactful content, where integrating as well as scaling the content must be efficient.

In addressing the challenges of integrating metaverse, VR, and AI technologies into educational frameworks, our project offers an innovative solution by incorporating these technologies, particularly OpenAI's GPT-4, into the curriculum. A key feature of this initiative is the creation of two unique metaverse scenes, each furnished with at least 40 customizable assets to enrich the learning environment. Targeted at modules like Consumer Behavior and Design Innovation, the project utilizes the metaverse to craft lifelike scenarios, such as a meticulously designed hotel lobby. For example, they might participate in a simulation where guest behavior in the hotel lobby is dynamically modeled, complete with interactive dialogues powered by GPT avatars. These avatars, capable of responding with a range of dialogues, allow students to experiment with various customer service strategies and observe their effects on guest satisfaction in real-time. Complementing this immersive experience, the project also offers pre-scripted design scenarios, leading students through key design principles and encouraging a deeper engagement with the subject matter. Through such practical applications, students gain a comprehensive understanding of theoretical concepts, bolstered by direct, interactive experiences within the metaverse.

Our project utilizes a mixed-methods research approach to meticulously evaluate the effects of immersive technologies on student engagement and learning outcomes. By blending various data types, from self-assessments to metaverse system-generated analytics, analyzed through both statistical and thematic methods, we aim to draw meaningful conclusions about the efficacy of immersive learning environments. The implementation also promotes inclusivity, offering both VR headset-based and non-headset options. This initiative aligns with SIT's mission to provide applied learning experiences, emphasizing innovative pedagogy and preparing students for the complexities of the modern world, even in contexts where direct industry collaboration is not feasible.