Discover a Metaverse Built for Business Education: A Tool For Augmenting Creativity and Innovation

Author : Winslet TY CHAN

Abstract :Adapting to changes in the complex and rapidly evolving business environment and market trends requires a combination of skills, including creativity, critical thinking, and innovation. It also calls for more advanced training tools in supporting learners to understand business management and marketing through an interactive and immersive way. The objectives of this study in two-folded. First, this study aims to explore the integration of metaverse, where learning transcends traditional classroom boundaries and enters immersive virtual environment that enable leaners to explore complex and practical concepts in visually stimulating ways, in business education for fostering creativity and innovation. Second, while the digital transformation of learning and teaching pedagogies provides opportunities for engaging, interactive, and personalized educational experience, this study draws on technology acceptance model to examine relationships among learners’ attitude, perceived usefulness and learning effectiveness in metaverse. This study collected data from 120 undergraduate business students who enrolled in the advanced level course – Product Management. Participants had experience on using metaverse for developing product collaboratively and delivering sales pitches on launching and managing product in one semester. Upon the completion of the course, participants were asked to rate on their openness to experience metaverse, perceived usefulness, attitude towards learning, engagement, and express the benefits and challenges of using metaverse for learning. The study revealed that learners with open attitude to experience metaverse perceived more usefulness during the class activities. Incorporating the metaverse significantly enhances student creativity, collaboration, and critical-thinking skill. This study also presented the challenges of the metaverse for educational purposes. This study discusses metaverse’s role in business education, and offers practical implications to practitioners who are interested in using innovative pedagogies and tools, such as virtual reality and gamification, for dynamic learning environment.

Keywords :Metaverse, Experiential Learning; Pedagogical Development; Business Education; Openness to Experience, Perceived Usefulness; Attitude Towards Learning

Conference Name :International Conference on Learning in Higher Education (ICLHE-24)

Conference Place Singapore, Singapore

Conference Date 25th Dec 2024