Four major challenges in metaverse education

01区块链·01区块链·21:33 编辑

Four major challenges in metaverse education

Author | Chenglin Pua (Malaysia)Asia)Editor | AtBaichengtypography | kingJi Longyan

In September 2022, META and VictoryXR, a virtual reality education startup headquartered in Iowa, USA, collaborated to create and open 10 metaverse virtual campuses. The project invested $150 million. Meta said as part of its immersive learning program, which aims to bring education into a virtual reality environment.

Education is one of the biggest applications of virtual reality and metaverse technology, and Meta is implementing this idea to help 10 universities launch metaverse-based virtual campuses. Although metaverse education provides more possibilities and flexibility, in reality metaverse education still needs to overcome many problems if it wants to be implemented. Examples include time and financial costs, issues such as data privacy and personal safety, lack of advanced infrastructure, and potential legal issues.

The cost of time and money

The metaverse is a virtual world. However, virtual worlds require a lot of time and capital costs to build (including manpower, fiber costs, etc.). In addition, the later operation of the metaverse also requires a large amount of resources to maintain its operation, such as the huge operating costs of the database, including electricity, water cooling resources, and related maintenance personnel.

Although to some extent, the metaverse provides a low-cost learning alternative. For example, building a lab costs millions of dollars and requires a lot of space and manual maintenance, and a virtual lab perfectly solves this problem. In reality, however, there are many hidden costs behind the metaverse.

In addition to that, the associated hardware costs actually invisibly increased the cost to the school. Examples include licensing of VR content, construction of digital twin campuses, VR headsets, and other investment costs. A metaverse course license could cost at least $20,000, and a digital twin campus could cost as much as $100,000. VR companies (Meta is currently free for the time being, but that won't be easy to say when it becomes popular; even when this fee is removed, other related costs are huge for many schools) will also charge each student a subscription fee of $200 a year to access their metaverse.

According to current prices, the lower version of each Oculus Quest 2 costs $399.99. This is just the cost of purchasing equipment; in fact, there are more maintenance costs later. Schools are also required to hire special personnel to maintain the above equipment, which has invisibly increased costs. Schools also need a lot of time to get students used to these devices. After all, it takes a long time to face electronic screens, which may cause eye fatigue, etc.

Finally, there are textbooks related to the metaverse. Unlike traditional textbooks, most textbooks in the metaverse are three-dimensional and dynamic. In this case, teachers will need to rewrite textbooks, etc. The reality, however, is that most educators currently don't have the ability to create their own metaverse teaching materials, which may involve merging video, still images, audio, text, and interactive elements into an immersive online experience.

Data privacy and personal safety issues

Previously, 01 Blockchain wrote “Seven Challenges in the Metaverse”, which included intellectual property disputes, data protection and privacy, legal challenges, monetary and payment system challenges, technical challenges, public acceptance, high investment, and commercial monopoly. With the advent of new technology, privacy data protection has always been one of the biggest concerns in the real world, and has received attention from all sectors of society. The internet we use today involves lots of data and privacy issues, not to mention the metaverse. The metaverse necessarily involves more data and privacy than the internet. The metaverse will most likely be a virtual space created by multiple companies in the future. For consumers or users, how to coordinate data protection between companies and how to ensure the security of private data must be the biggest concern.

The amount and richness of personal data collected by the metaverse will be unprecedented, including individual physiological responses, movement, and possibly even brainwave data. Will this data hire a dedicated security company to take responsibility for its data security? If a user's personal data is stolen or misused in the metaverse, who is responsible, what impact will it have on users in the real world, etc. In the construction of the metaverse, each company should strictly consider the privacy issues of such personal information and set up good mechanisms to prevent the leakage of personal data.

Research agencies Centre for International Governance Innovation and Ipsos found in a questionnaire survey that about 57% of global consumers expressed extreme (31%) or very (26%) concerns about online privacy and security. The study interviewed more than 24,000 internet users between the ages of 16 and 64 in 24 countries. In fact, at least half of internet users in every region express their privacy concerns.

Global users express concerns about online privacy and security survey results

Source: Research reports from Centre for International Governance Innovation and Ipsos

The business model for companies that develop metaverse technology relies on collecting detailed personal data from users. For example, people who want to use Meta's Oculus Quest 2 must have a Facebook account, etc. VR headsets can collect highly personalized and sensitive data, such as student location, student physical characteristics, movements, and sounds. However, Meta has not promised to keep this data private or restrict advertisers' possible access to it.

Additionally, Meta is developing a high-end VR headset called Project Cambria, which has more advanced features. The sensors in the device will allow the virtual avatar to maintain eye contact and reflect facial expressions such as the user's eye movements. This data helps advertisers measure users' attention and deliver personalized ads based on their actions. If professors and students know that their every move, speech, and even facial expression is being monitored by the school and a major technology company, they may not be able to freely participate in classroom discussions. After all, schools or educational institutions should not be monitored.

Lack of advanced infrastructure

In the future, people will enter the metaverse through VR/AR connections. To a certain extent, this technology can solve the problem of “showing” the virtual world to us. Today, however, this technology can only provide visual and auditory information; other perceptual abilities, touch, smell, or taste, cannot be provided. A realistic virtual world allows us to experience other perceptual abilities, thereby increasing the sense of realism. How to make people experience other perceptions is a problem that needs to be solved technically.

Additionally, we also need to input parameters into the virtual world, such as voice, gestures, movements, etc. Today's VR/AR mainly relies on hand sensors (or gloves) to input parameters into the virtual world. This reduces realism, compared to the real world where we don't need a sensor in our hands. Although some gestures and posture recognition technology based on machine vision are now being applied, many practical problems have also been encountered, such as field of view range and obstruction.

VR/AR devices with handheld sensors

Haptic feedback is also a technical issue. How to make our hands and bodies feel objects in the virtual world doesn't seem to be solved by today's technology for the time being. Among the top players in the movie, players mainly rely on wearing force feedback clothing all over their bodies to sense objects and perceptions in the virtual world. Even if people are willing to wear full-body gear to experience the metaverse, being able to achieve a full body feel with such a costume is still a technical challenge. Whether people in the real world would buy this costume to experience the metaverse is also a question.

Costumes from the “Number One Player” movie

The metaverse's high demand for computing power is also a technical challenge. Computers need to run simulations of the physical world, render scenes, interact with other characters (including real and virtual characters), etc., all of which require a huge amount of computation. Developing the computing power required to run the metaverse is also a major challenge. However, with huge computing power comes the problem of energy consumption. Higher computing power means higher energy consumption, and higher energy consumption costs will also be passed on to users, ultimately leading to a higher threshold for people to enter the metaverse.

Most metaverse applications, such as 3D video, are broadband intensive. They require high-speed data networks to handle all the information flowing between sensors and users across virtual and physical spaces, and the associated network infrastructure is very demanding. Most cities have good network infrastructure; however, rural areas don't have to. For example, 97% of people living in urban areas in the US can use high-speed connections, compared to 65% and 60% in rural and tribal areas, respectively.

Although metaverse education provides more possibilities for offline education. However, it may also have invisibly added a threshold for people in some regions to prevent them from joining the metaverse to receive education.

Potential legal issues

Although we have entered the 21st century, it is undeniable that there are still some biases. Examples include gender prejudice, race, or ideology. And this prejudice may be amplified in the metaverse. Because after all, it is not yet known whether prejudice in the metaverse can be controlled by law. For example, if a person openly discriminates against sex in the metaverse, will he be punished in response?

In the real world, we are afraid to do this because there will be social pressure. However, the metaverse is a brand new world, and many people can speak freely. For example, in the Internet world, there are many biases or discriminatory remarks that are impossible to occur in the real world, because people have less responsibility. The Internet has now profoundly influenced the younger generation of students, and it is difficult to guarantee that the metaverse will not have a more negative impact on students.

Then there are issues such as crime. For example, on June 2, 2022, a female psychotherapist was sexually assaulted on Meta's Horizon Worlds platform and shared her experience on the forum. This woman was verbally and sexually harassed by three or four players with male voices within 60 seconds of joining. They “gang-raped” her virtual image and also took pictures. The woman said it was a nightmare; she was so scared that she was stuck in place, too late to even set up a safety barrier.

The Extended Mind (a virtual reality strategy research organization) revealed in a report released in 2018 that they visited a total of more than 600 VR users about virtual reality social experiences. According to the survey results, 36% of men and 49% of women who regularly use VR technology have experienced sexual harassment. It can be seen that problems such as sexual harassment will continue to exist in the virtual world and even the metaverse, and even worsen compared to the real world.

School violence is an intractable social problem. However, there are many limitations in the real world, and there aren't any in the metaverse yet. Whether issues such as violence, discrimination, and bullying in schools will be amplified in the metaverse may take time to be further verified. However, how to prevent and subsequent punishments require further thought at the school level.

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说明: All Bitpush articles reflect the author's views only and do not constitute investment advice.

Four major challenges in metaverse education

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