Instructional Design in the Metaverse Part 1 Introduction

The promise of the metaverse in education is like a mirage in
the desert. Educators seem to be forever anticipating the arrival of the
metaverse but still not yet embracing it.

However, this waiting time has not been without value as solid research foundations have been built. In an article titled “The Hottest Job in Higher Education: Instructional Designer”,
Decherney and Levander asserted that as instructional designers (IDs)
have become the “sherpas of online learning teams, experts in how to teach and design a course” (2020, para. 5).

It follows that instructional designers will be the experts by
reading research and determining the best route to the metaverse
promise.

This is the Way.

This article series intends to provide guidance for
instructional designers entering this new and rapidly changing space by
straddling between what is known and unknown in instructional design in
the metaverse. Early research that addresses the metaverse “tends to
focus on outcomes-based research while neglecting the important details
of how something was accomplished” (Beck, Morgado, & O’Shea, 2023, p. 1). Studies can also target emergent cause-and-effect or comparison relationships and ignore
known educational practices and principles. Quests can contain grand
promises, spurring a rush to implement, followed by unmet hopes and
expectations (Mayer, 2020,
p. 13). If administrators determine that the metaverse does contain
unmet hopes, future funding for uses that truly could change education
for the better will dry up.

After this first Introduction section, the second of eight sections will examine research myths
in the educational metaverse. These myths include that the metaverse
will cause more learning at a faster rate and reach learners in new
ways. I will look closely at what the research currently says for and
against seven specific claims. In the third section, I will look at what
the research is pointing to as characteristics of success
when considering the incorporation and implementation of the metaverse.
The characteristics do not seem to arrive in popular metaverse claims,
but like the slow and steady tortoise, they seem to predict the winners
of the race. In Sections 4 and 5, I will cover the detailed work of
instructional design, targeting especially what we already know about multimedia learning and what will be uncovered in the metaverse. Section 6 will discuss the current limitations
of using research to drive instructional design in the metaverse.
Finally, Sections 7 and 8 are written to leave the reader with hope and soaring possibilities
in mind. Because instructional design in the metaverse is an emergent
topic, some discoveries are yet to arrive to their eureka moments; those
will fall completely outside of our prediction. Thus, this series will
have 8 sections but innumerable (until it is done) parts.

 

 This conceptual series will propose instructional design principles for the metaverse.

 

Approach

This article series explores the topic with an evidence-based
learner-centric approach. That approach fits best for instructional
design, a discipline that considers the learning needs of the learner
first and foremost. This chapter does not support the use of the
metaverse in education for the sake of the cross or extended reality
(XR) technology itself, which could be considered a technology-centered
approach (Mayer, 2020).

Instead, metaverse solutions should be selected when they are
best fit for the instructional situation at hand. In many cases, they
will be. But in some cases, they will not.

This series strives to illuminate the characteristics and
conditions to consider while keeping the learner and not the technology
in the center of focus.

While maintaining that learner focus, this series will use
several vocabulary terms and acronyms. Terms such as metaverse, cross
reality, or  extended reality (XR) will be used interchangeably to refer
to the entire technological incorporation. However, this author will
use XR to refer more often to the technologies, i.e. hardware and
software (Ziker, Truman, & Dodds, 2021),
and metaverse to refer to a computer-mediated experience whether it is a
game, application, or platform. Two-dimensional (2D) experiences,
including monitors and simulations, will often be juxtaposed with
three-dimensional (3D) experiences, including headsets or the immersive
web (WebXR). The terms instructional design (ID) and instructional
designers (IDs) are only separated by the discipline of how people learn
and how to design instruction to help that process versus being
the one who practices it. Nevertheless, popular terms like learning
experience design (LXD) and learning experience designers (LXDs) convey
equivalent meaning to aims and mission of instructional design. This
chapter will refer to any planned 3D educational interactions as
experiences. Indeed, the wide variety of vocabulary and terms is “a
characteristic of the early evolution of a branch of technology” (Dodds, 2021, para. 5).

Part 2 will cover my theoretical basis and scope. 

 

 #InstructionalDesign #XR #Multimedia #Principles #Mayer #LXD #ID
#InstructionalDesigner #WebXR #3D #2D #Approach #LearnerCentric
#ResearchMyths #WhatWeKnow #WhatWeDoNotKnow #OnlineSherpas #ThisIsTheWay

This article is simultaneously published on LinkedIn articles here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/instructional-design-metaverse-part-1-heather-dodds-ph-d-/