What is the Metaverse?

Furthermore, what was interesting to us at Exponential Destiny about this PwC study is that it was released in 2020, thus was actually preformed using VR technology from 2019, which was pre-Covid pandemic.  We knew that due to the global Covid pandemic, there was a sharp and sudden rise in interest and demand for remote digital collaboration, and we observed first-hand how innovation in VR technology accelerated dramatically in 2020 and 2021.  Thus, our feeling was that this PwC study was already outdated since the technology had advanced so much since this study was conducted, and therefore our assumption was that the integration of VR into education using the latest VR tools would most likely be significantly more effective and impressive if conducted today.

This is part of our mission today for why we created Exponential Destiny, to further explore this untapped potential of VR being used in education using the latest technology available, and specifically when applied in public schools in marginalized communities where the education system is suffering the most.

However, our big question was whether the impressive results of the 2020 PwC study (above) – which was more centric to corporate training and education environments – could be achieved in the public education system, and furthermore could it be effective, affordable, and scalable in under-resourced – even struggling – lower income communities?

This curiosity – as to the real potential of VR in public education within under-served communities – is the basis of the work we do today.

We feel there is real potential because from our own work in this field we know that the technical aptitude required to create in these environments has become very low; for example, the required skillset to become a creator in the metaverse, using various new Metaverse design platforms, was more akin to “power-point in 3D” vs. writing computer programming code. In other words, a non-technical person, like a high school student or teacher, using no programming/coding skillset, could create and even thrive in using and even developing these virtual environments. We see the potential opportunity for a school to be self-sufficient and not dependent on outside costly resources, since students and teachers can be easily trained in these environments and use the capability to create new educational pedagogies.

Also, in talking with educators, it was clear a teacher in an under-performing public school would be ecstatic with even fractional results as was reported in the PwC efficacy study, and thus we felt this potential result would be an incentive for a traditional school (not typically willing or able to try new things) to at least experiment and explore the potential of this new capability.

Lastly, since Exponential Destiny’s leadership team was comprised predominantly of recent high school graduates from an under-resourced school community in south-central Los Angeles, we knew first-hand the potential to use these immersive and experiential digital environments to entice and engage students to partake in their education. We personally discovered how fun and creative it was to learn in VR, especially when applying “edu-tainment” based methods, incorporating prize and game-theory.

The puzzle started to come together, and at Exponential Destiny we felt a passion that led to the formulation of a mission to explore, research, and pioneer the adaptation and adoption of VR and related Metaverse innovations into the struggling public education system to address the Issues and Market Failures described previously (above).

As a result of doing our own experimentation with introducing VR into public high schools in under-resourced communities, we have developed some of our own research results and insights. You can review those here.