Happy student wearing virtual reality goggles at school in computer science class
Jennifer A. Kingson
Axios
As schools gingerly embrace virtual reality, Meta announced Tuesday that it’s supplying VR equipment and resources to 15 U.S. universities as part of a broader goal to make classroom education more “immersive.”
Why it matters: Teachers and tech executives say VR and the metaverse could eventually be a game-changer for hands-on learning, but there are lots of kinks to work out first.
“This is a long road,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, tells Axios in an exclusive interview. “We’re now moving from talking about the potential of these immersive technologies in the classroom to actually trying to develop a head of steam.”
Driving the news: Meta is donating $300 Quest 2 headsets to 15 U.S. universities that use VR as a pedagogical tool.
Stanford University and the University of Iowa will use them to teach “soft skills” to business school students — how to have a difficult conversation with an employee, for example, or how to interview well.
Arizona State University, which has been working with VR startup Dreamscape since 2020, will use them to teach languages, enabling students to converse in new tongues in different virtual settings.
Morehouse College, which has been teaching a course on Black history in VR, will use them in its “digital twin” college — also called “metaversities” — where lessons are virtual.
Purdue Global will use them to train nurses in virtual simulations of hospitals, while Nova Southeastern University will use them to train medical students in anatomy.
The big picture: Meta, Apple and a host of other companies large and small are betting that VR, AR (augmented reality) and MR (mixed reality) will become an integral part of the learning experience at all educational levels.
