An Empirical Study of A Smart Education Model Enabled by the Edu-Metaverse to Enhance Better Learning Outcomes for Students

The Edu-Metaverse, a vast ensemble of different technologies, has initiated a great and unprecedented change in the field of education. This change has been effected through the following Edu-Metaverse characteristics: embodied and multimodal interaction; immersive teaching scenarios, which can accelerate learning and skill acquisition; and the emergence of AI-enabled agents. In comparison to traditional classroom teaching models, smart education is a collaborative and visual model that adopts the latest AI technologies to reach a learning outcome. However, a problem that should be considered is how a smart education model, enabled by the Edu-Metaverse, can be developed to enhance better learning outcomes for students. Such a model should highlight smart pedagogy in the context of the Edu-Metaverse, together with a smart teaching environment, multimodal teaching resources, and AI-enabled assessment. In this study, we focused on the teaching of college English to 60 students from Zhejiang Open University. We investigated the effectiveness of a smart education model, which was empowered by the Edu-Metaverse, in enhancing better learning outcomes for the students, using a combination of qualitative and quantitative research. After the one-semester-long experiment, questionnaires were sent out to complement the interview findings. It was found that the students who engaged in the smart education model in the Edu-Metaverse yielded higher scores in oral English, vocabulary and grammar, reading comprehension, English-to-Chinese translation, and writing than those who engaged in traditional instruction. Therefore, this study suggests that a smart education model enabled by the Edu-Metaverse, which is characterized by a highly immersive experience, multimodal interaction, and a high degree of freedom for resource sharing and creation can help learners to realize deep learning, develop their capacity for high-order thinking, and help them to become intelligent individuals in an online learning space. In order to facilitate this smart learning, we make the following suggestions for educational institutions: (1) teachers should improve the design of teaching scenarios, (2) teachers should focus on learning assessment that is based on core literacy, and (3) teachers’ knowledge of the architecture of the Edu-Metaverse should be enhanced.