Metaversities, and what businesses can learn from them

#metaverse #metaversity #VR #edutech #businessleader

If I told you that top-tier colleges were going to enable their students to be better connected, train better, and interact more regularly, you would say “great, sounds good.”

If I told you they were doing highly interactive remote learning that finally resembles a live classroom experience, you’d probably say, “of course, makes sense.”

If I told you that students would be able to practice any of their learning together whenever they wanted, all in an extremely immersive environment that seems very real, we’d probably agree that it all sounds very useful and exciting.

But how would you react if I told you that these universities were entering…

…the metaverse?

You might want to vomit! Or actually laugh out loud! And to be honest… sometimes I do too.

But I think it’s time for us all to check our thinking and figure out where that negative connotation originated. Because whether we like it or not… metaversities are coming.

And if your business doesn't understand this trend and how to learn from it, you'll miss out on money that's ready to be earned or saved.

The last new thing everyone laughed about

(Photo By @_PabloMB)

In the ’90s, the internet was great for creepy chat rooms and silly chicken games. And to be fair, yes: the chicken game was stupid.

But no matter how many ridiculous ways the internet was used, it became (obviously) sort of a big deal. As in… it ushered in the greatest communication shift since the printing press.

The metaverse has also stumbled out of the gate with plenty of high-profile poor use cases and shoddy explanations.

But at the same time, it comes with an almost unsettling amount of promise and potential.

Today we’ll do a quick dive into one of the more interesting use cases that’s quickly becoming a reality: the Metaversity.

Time to imagine

Imagine being a freshman going to college again for the first time. You’re 98% excited and 2% scared (or maybe 2% excited and 98% scared). A lot of those nerves are wrapped up in the fact that you’re in a completely new place, finding everything for the first time, and more responsible for your own life than ever before.

Sure, you went on that one visit last year. Sure, you’ve been texting your roommate for… a week. But the nerves are real.

Now imagine this: three weeks before you start college, your university sends you a VR headset.

You open up the box and read some instructions that say there is a VR mixer this coming Friday. You’re intrigued. Friday comes and you put on the headset and join this mixer, where 2000 incoming students are broken up into groups of 20.

Each group of 20 incoming students play ice breaker games together for an hour. At the end of this 1 hour, everyone is given an easy way to exchange all their contact info and social media with whomever they want.

For the next 2 weeks, there are multiple other mixers. You meet more people, specifically people on your dorm floor and in your major, you attend virtual orientation, you spend real time getting to know your professors and advisors. You even get to freely explore an incredible “digital twin” of the campus.

After all that, you’re perfectly prepared to start confidently, start friendships with people you connected with, focus on your classes right away, and set yourself up for success overall.

And that’s just one limited use case that doesn’t even touch on the classroom experience, out-of-the-box training environments, and the possibility of making remote learning NOT-so-remote.

We’ll get to all that in another article.

The Business Opportunities

If you’re not in the higher ed industry, there’s still plenty to learn from this and apply in your business.

Are you in an industry where…

• meeting people prior to showing up makes a difference?
• getting a real lay of the land before showing up would create confidence and accelerate someone’s onboarding?
• rich, immersive 3D tours would close the deal for someone like a brochure never could?
• previously inaccessible experiences could be recreated virtually to include more people (without paying for more space)?

Whatever it is, this is an area you can experiment in without going full-tilt right away.

Just make sure you’re not the one who is remembered for printing “The metaverse? BAH!! Nothing will ever come of it!!”

Do you need further guidance on how to navigate this for your business specifically? DM me on LinkedIn and we can chat!