Motivation and Hurdles for the Student Adoption of Metaverse-based Classroom: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

Metaverse is an emerging technology that combines the virtual world and the real world, resulting in an immersive user experience. It has many applications. In this study, we inves-tigated the users' perception of the Metaverse-based classroom in the UAE by qualitatively surveying 84 higher education students. After coding the users' responses, we generated a world cloud and analyzed the user responses. A little more than a third of the surveyed users do not believe that they will benefit from using Metaverse in higher education, and they would not like to use it. Users are mainly concerned about their health conditions, security, and privacy of their information, and the students' movement may result in students losing focus (distraction). On the other hand, the learner will be motivated by the interactive nature of the Metaverse-based classroom and the education's location and time flexibility. Different practical and theoretical implications have been identified and discussed in this paper.