Hong Kong University of Science and Technology announced that it will set up Metahkust, an online campus for the metaverse. The university will inaugurate a mixed virtual reality classroom as the first step toward this project. This will allow students from different parts of the world to take part in classes as if they were in the same room. The new campus in Guangzhou will open in the virtual classroom in September.
“A lot of guests might be overseas and can’t attend, so we will host it in the metaverse.”
Institutions are finding new ways to use and work with metaverse environments, and they are slowly putting these technologies to use in their everyday work. The Hong Kong University announced plans to build a shared metaverse that would connect both of its campuses as if they were one. Metahkust is the name of the technology that will let students from different parts of the university attend classes and activities as if they were in the same place.
This metaverse-based system will be operational for the first time in September, when the university’s Guangzhou campus will open. Professor of computational media and arts at the Guangzhou campus Pan Hui says:
“We will show it in the metaverse because many of our guests may be abroad and unable to attend.”
The university said that metaverse-based classrooms and campuses are more helpful over a conventional classroom setup that uses Zoom and other video conferencing apps. Hui says that metaverse settings get students more involved and make them feel like they are going to classes in the real world. He said more:
“Using Zoom feels like you’re just looking at a 2D screen. But through virtual reality, you can feel as if you’re there. I think interaction is very important for learning. How you interact with students around you will increase your learning outcome.”
Hui also said that this new focus will create a sense of “unity and engagement” and greater level of interaction that would be hard to find in a world with limited space. The campus will use a variety of sensors and cameras to send information to the metaverse system. This will help build a virtual campus that works well together .
This news is published and verified by the NFT News media team.