Learner Engagement in the Metaverse: A Community of Inquiry for Self-Regulated Learners

Introduction

Learner engagement, or immersion, or participation, is an important indicator of school-related success and even self-achievement related actions. So, what precisely does “learner engagement” entail, one would wonder? This is a valid query that scholars in the field of education commonly discuss. Given that it is impacted by several circumstances, engagement is complicated and hard to describe. It is important to distinguish this from simple participation. A student can participate — be present — in a lecture without being greatly involved in the subject. Students can speak up and respond to inquiries which are familiar to them, yet that does not guarantee they have thoroughly examined the content. Engagement entails active involvement. Despite the complexity to define it, three major kinds of engagement have been identified (Fredricks et al., 2004). The concept of behavioral engagement refers to learners’ active involvement in educational activities, such as academic ones, as well as social and extracurricular ones. Emotional engagement is a feeling of identity or attachment to the school, including learners’ emotional responses in the classroom and in the educational community. Cognitive engagement is learners’ commitment in their own learning and includes self-regulation and enthusiasm. Metaverse has repercussions for all three. In this chapter, we discuss the metaverse from the overall student engagement perspective, as a function of a number of factors including communities of inquiry proposed by Garrison et al. (1999) and researched/expanded by many researchers (e.g., Dempsey & Zhang, 2019). We also argue that engagement in the metaverse largely depends on self-regulation, which is another factor closely tied to academic engagement. We provide and synthesize current educational metaverse practices, and research examples addressing the metaverse and learner engagement together, as well as the relevant factors linking or influencing the two. We finally present implications for education.

Engagement, among many other elements at various hierarchical levels, is one of the most critical factors impacting learner achievement and learning at the student level. The goal of students’ participation in course-related activities is — and should primarily be — for them to learn something. In addition to the three major categories, behavioral, cognitive, and emotional (Fredricks et al., 2004; Pilotti et al., 2017), other dimensions like relational engagement (Davis et al., 2012) have been explored in the literature. Students can practice all modes of engagement in face-to-face educational contexts. However, when the learning medium shifts from physical to virtual, these opportunities shrink — one could argue that this is primarily due to the lower quality of human presence in online spaces — or transform. The shrinkage has been true so far, to some extent, but as the technology like the metaverse is advancing, it is becoming more and more obsolete.

The metaverse is an enhanced virtual environment over the Internet. It has been criticized to be just a label referring to an idea that has already been around for many years. “Wait, doesn’t that exist already?” says Ravenscraft (2022). So, the metaverse will continue to be a debated concept/idea/reality for a while: “the metaverse is the future of the internet. Or it’s a video game. Or maybe it’s a deeply uncomfortable, worse version of Zoom? It’s hard to say,” (Ravenscraft, 2022), while the functionality and purpose of the metaverse will continue to evolve. Regardless of this discussion, it offers original opportunities for learners to experience learning at another, elevated, different level.