This fall, students at 10 universities, including Morehouse College and New Mexico State University, will attend metaversities—a portmanteau of “metaverse” and “universities”—such as the one attended by the Fisk students. A metaversity is an immersive virtual reality platform where remote faculty and students don VR headsets and meet synchronously as they would on a physical campus. (In some cases, the virtual campus is a digital replica of the institution in which they are enrolled. In other cases, the technology is deployed in face-to-face classes.) In metaverse “classrooms,” students may learn history while “traveling” on the Underground Railroad “armed” with Harriet Tubman’s pistol. Or they may learn about literature while “sitting” on the judge’s bench in the courtroom that was at the center of To Kill a Mockingbird.
