Meta, in a mission to accomplish its metaverse ambitions, has agreed to help 10 universities in launching metaverse-based campuses.
University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC), is one of the selected universities with over 45,000 online students who will soon be able to meet and take classes in the metaverse.
Daniel Mintz, chairman of the department of information technology at UMGC said: “We’ve never had a campus before, and now we have our first. It has a duck pond.”
This plan will see the university offer up to five courses in the metaverse campus and they will come at no additional cost, compared to non-immersive courses. The university is also limited by the number of headsets needed for the courses.
The nine other institutions that are part of this project are the University of Kansas School of Nursing, New Mexico State University, South Dakota State University, Florida A&M University, West Virginia University, Southwestern Oregon Community College, California State University, Dominguez Hills, and Alabama A&M University.
On a Quest for enlightenment
As part of Meta’s involvement, the tech giant is donating its Meta Quest headsets to the aforementioned universities for students to use in the courses. One of Meta’s objectives with the Immersive Learning Project is to increase students’ access to these technologies by teaming up with organisations and universities.
Meta has invested $150 million to deliver headsets to these universities and organisations in partnership with Victoryxr, the company designing the metaverse campuses.
Steve Grubbs, the founder of Victoryxr, stated: “Education is an exciting use case for the metaverse, and Meta Immersive Learning will help creators around the world gain skills for the metaverse and create immersive experiences for learners.”
Isa Muhammad is a writer and video game journalist covering many aspects of entertainment media including the film industry. He's steadily writing his way to the sharp end of journalism and enjoys staying informed. If he's not reading, playing video games or catching up on his favourite TV series, then he's probably writing about them.
