Building For & With Educators: Meta for Education’s Beta Program

In April, we announced that we’re working on a new educational offering for Meta Quest headsets designed to give teachers, trainers, and administrators access to a range of education-specific apps and features. As part of our ongoing work with universities, we’re excited to announce the Meta for Education beta program with over a dozen colleges and universities across the US and UK, including Arizona State University, Houston Community College, Imperial College London, Miami Dade College, Morehouse College, New Mexico State University, San Diego State University, Savannah College of Art & Design, The University of Glasgow, University of Iowa, University of Leeds, University of Miami, and University of Michigan. Participants have the opportunity to provide feedback on Meta for Education ahead of its official launch.

The Impetus Behind Meta for Education

Virtual and mixed reality are poised to transform the way we learn. Meta for Education will make it easier for educators to discover interactive and engaging content that makes learning more enjoyable and effective, covering a range of subjects including science, medicine, history, and language arts. And metaverse technologies make it possible to create immersive experiences that deepen learning and understanding beyond what is possible in the physical world, like field trips to distant museums and risk-free hands-on training.

“The first time I put on a headset, it was immediately apparent to me that this is not like a screen or TV,” says University of Miami Professor and University XR Initiative Lead Kim Grinfeder. “It had a completely different feeling. We were creating experiences. I immediately recognized this as a tool that’s going to change education—change the way we teach. It allows us to bring the world into the classroom.”

Emergent Opportunities

The introduction of VR in the classroom has been linked with improved learning outcomes. Morehouse College recently saw attendance rates go up by 10 percentage points, while student achievement and grades went up by 11%. And not only can virtual and mixed reality help broaden a student’s horizons, it can equip them with the tools they need to better understand other people’s lived experiences, potentially reducing bias.

“Students are engaging with the technology in meaningful ways,” notes Houston Community College Reality CoLab Director Rubén Durán. “With our project Virtual Reality for Empathy, we invite in community organizations, and members of the community and HCC students come to the lab and role play to raise awareness and enhance student achievement and experiences that are unknown to the person participating. And this immersion creates emotions in what we think is the initial step to create empathy. The outcomes of this experience are forming part of important research conducted by our psychology faculty.”

We’ve long known the utility of VR when it comes to the medical field. That’s because it enables doctors, nurses, and students to get hands-on experience dealing with emergency situations they may not otherwise come across in their training. That same principle applies to education more broadly, too, in that these technologies unlock access to rare experiences and opportunities.

“We’re not replacing things that we can do in person, like have dialogues and face-to-face interactions, but we’re exploring things like going into outer space and observing the Earth and the phases of the moon from that perspective, or going underwater or across international boundaries, where in some cases students can’t do that for a variety of reasons, including physical accessibility,” says San Diego State University Senior Director of Instructional Technology Dr. Sean Hauze. “We’re empowering students to do things that would be out of reach otherwise.”

The Benefits of Immersive Education

Through the use of immersive technologies like virtual and mixed reality, many schools are reporting improved student outcomes, higher levels of engagement, and even new forms of connection. And just as early adopters had a leg up as email and the internet became the norm rather than an outlier, those who dive into this technology now should be all the more skilled and comfortable with its use as it evolves over time.

“We’re trying to normalize the use of extended reality,” says University of Miami Associate Director of VR/AR Initiatives Thomas Merrick. “We fully believe that XR is going to be ubiquitous—as ubiquitous as laptops are today. And if not for the students learning about it early on, it won’t be as effective as it could be moving forward.”

Evolving Our Approach

Through the Meta for Education beta program, we’re receiving invaluable feedback from educators, which we’ll use to evolve the product over time—and the early results are promising.

“We’ve been very fortunate to beta test a lot of the early prototypes of these programs,” says New Mexico State University Director of Microcredentials Instructional Design Andrew Sedillo. “Meta checks in with us—they’re asking us what they can do to improve the products, and they’re actually listening. And because of that, we’ve developed a lot of trust with Meta because we understand that they’re putting out a product that’s going to impact educators in a positive way.”

“I’m really happy to be pioneering this with Meta and that Meta chose to partner with us and not assume that they had all the answers,” adds Morehouse College Metaversity Director Dr. Muhsinah Morris. “I think Meta has all of the tools that they need, and allowing us to beta test is giving you better insight on how to make the product better for us. And that will help it be more widely adopted: People will know that it was built with educators that are just like them, that you cared enough to take our input in, and that you heard us and listened and iteratively changed because of it.”

As we continue to build on the road to the next computing platform, we know that we can’t do it alone. We’re grateful to the participants in the Meta for Education beta for their invaluable feedback, and we look forward to sharing Meta for Education more widely this winter.

“This moment is greater than any one institution or one company. We need to come together in collaboration across the creators, the developers, educational institutions, research organizations, and tech companies to build this new learning ecosystem because it’s going to benefit every individual and industry," says Monica Arés, Executive Director of Imperial IDEA Lab, Imperial College London. “We’re finally at a place where we have a way to combine the digital and physical worlds, and it’s unlocking this entirely new set of tools, which is what makes all of this so exciting.”