Is Education Ready to Embrace Metaverse?

Metaverse, an immersive virtual world that is facilitated by the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), is expected to be soon part of our lives. Indeed, in some areas, such as in the game industry, this revolutionary technology is already being used. In the context of education, however, metaverse is not yet being extensively utilized and its possible usage is currently being debated. To contribute to this debate, the current study explores students' and educators' perceptions of metaverse and its potential to be used in education. To study these questions a mixed research approach was employed combining both quantitative and qualitative data collection. Specifically, an online questionnaire was distributed to students and semi structured interviews have been conducted with lecturers. Results suggest that students and teachers have a relatively good understanding of metaverse and foresee its utilization in education in the next few years. They remain open about the extent to which this will happen and divided as how fundamental a change it will be.