The rising trend of Metaverse in education: challenges, opportunities, and ethical considerations

TLDR

The Metaverse is rapidly infiltrating education, driven by tech leaders, accelerated by COVID‑19 remote learning, and now attracting educators, yet a literature gap remains. This systematic review follows the PRISMA framework to examine the Metaverse’s role in education, identify educational uses, and highlight gaps for future research. The review shows that enabling technologies such as extended reality (XR) and the Internet of Everything (IoE) will shape future educational services within the Metaverse. It identifies key challenges, ethical concerns, and potential threats to Metaverse‑based education, providing a roadmap for future studies on improving learning and teaching experiences.

Abstract

Metaverse is invading the educational sector and will change human-computer interaction techniques. Prominent technology executives are developing novel ways to turn the Metaverse into a learning environment, considering the rapid growth of technology. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, people have grown accustomed to teleworking, telemedicine, and numerous other forms of distance interaction. Recently, the Metaverse has been the focus of many educators. With Facebook's statement that it was rebranding and promoting itself as Meta, this field saw a surge in interest in the areas of computer science and education. There is a literature gap in studying the Metaverse's role in education. This article is a systematic review following the PRISMA framework that reviews the role of the Metaverse in education to shrink the literature gap. It presents various educational uses to aid future research in this field. Additionally, it demonstrates how enabling technologies like extended reality (XR) and the internet of everything (IoE) will significantly impact educational services in the Metaverses of the future of teaching and learning. The article also outlines key challenges, ethical issues, and potential threats to using the Metaverse for education to offer a road map for future research that will investigate how the Metaverse will improve learning and teaching experiences.