Lecture in a metaverse environment gathered a record-breaking group of students

Text: Siiri Welling 

"The Gamification and Serious Games course is a course intended for third-year engineering students. The theory of serious games and gamification is applied interactively and collaboratively by the students in a metaverse environment", clarifies Werner Ravyse, senior lecturer in Turku University of Applied Sciences. 

A metaverse environment refers to a platform that combines physical and virtual worlds. Turku University of Applied Sciences' metaverse is accessible via personal computers, so working in that metaverse is not location specific. The environment allows participation through avatars, and everyone can communicate with others using their own voices. 

Gamification refers to the application of the game mechanics of videogames in learning. A serious game, on the other hand, is a game designed primarily for non-recreational purposes, for instance, for education or for rehabilitation purposes. The research group has a history of serious games, like one created to teach kids fire safety.

What is new about this gamification and serious games course is that for the first time such a large number of students (57) were able to simultaneously, interactively, and cooperatively participate in it. 

“As far as I am aware, no other Finnish higher education institution has previously succeeded on this, i.e., teaching in a metaverse environment with an equally large group of students. Technology worked well, and everyone was able to communicate and interact with each other”, says Ravyse. 

The course was implemented in cooperation with the Turku University of Applied Sciences, the University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University. The technology behind the metaverse course was in turn developed by the Futuristic Interactive Technologies research group of Turku UAS. The aim is to transfer the lecture later into Open Studies of Turku UAS. Ravyse believes that up to 200 students could attend the course at the same time.

“This course has two types of assignments: a series of small assignments, such as conceptual diagrams addressing theoretical aspects of gamification and useful games. And in addition, larger tasks where students must actually use what they have learned. They will have to create their own environment with their own gamified solutions”, says Ravse. 

The structure of the course utilizes existing materials, although new ones were specially created for it. According to Ravyse, creating the course was not challenging, neither in pedagogic nor in technological terms. 

"This is part of the long-term development work that we have carried out in our research group. Our aim is to build a learning environment that can be widely utilized by universities and other education institutions, especially with an eye in the Digivisio 2030 tray. We also welcome other higher education institutions to test the new learning environment, says Mika Luimula, Turku University of Applied Sciences' Executive Lecturer and leader of the Futuristic Interactive Technologies –research group.