What the metaverse means for higher education

Kevin Hogan OK. Hello and welcome to this latest episode of Innovations and Education Ecampus News is podcast on the latest and greatest happenings in Higher Ed Tech this month. I'm Kevin Hogan and I'm glad you found us. This month I had the opportunity to chat with Silicon Valley veteran and serial entrepreneur Eric Pulier, founder and CEO of a virtual spaces company called Vatom. Where we dive into the realm of augmented reality and virtual reality, and how these transformative technologies have the potential to revolutionize higher education. Yep, you've heard that before. The promise and promises have been there for a long time. For many years, the best that could be said of AR VR was that it was hot air and at its worst, no better than snake oil. But just as with many other technologies over the pandemic years, the application of AR and VR have begun to turn into actual reality. From virtualization exercises to always on, any device access to content. Eric's work and insights bringing insiders look into that transformation have a listen. OK, Eric, thanks very much for joining me today. Really appreciate your time. Eric Pulier Great to be here. Kevin Hogan I guess we should get started by just give us a little background, a little bit of your origin story and how you got involved in these various platforms and we'll dig into what those platforms are in a second. Just yeah, just give us a little bit of the background. Eric Pulier Sure. Well, in a nutshell, my origin story, as you put it, I guess goes back all the way to Teaneck, NJ. Where I grew up and at 10 years old, my father brought home one of the first computers small enough to fit in the home, called the salt 20 by processor technology, and I started jumping in 16, started my first company, and ironically 16 companies later. Now building out these platforms the way that this came about. Was really a natural evolution of my work that started when the Internet became the web, or I guess the web became an overlay on the Internet, which was really in the 90s and I went around evangelizing the power of the web for business for. Sector healthcare, government education and as people started to adopt it, they eventually stopped asking why do I want to use the web? Why do I want a website? And they said how can I use it and how do we? Make it better. And then my evolution to today has been an evolution of leveraging these technologies to create superior engagement, better data. More interesting social connections between people and this has been a natural progression until now, now has been a step change that is dramatically different almost, I would say, as profound as the shift from Internet to web to now the web. Two to Web three and its applications to education are. Kevin Hogan Yeah. And it's interesting. You mentioned that because we're talking about higher end here, they were kind of the original platform, right, when you look at ARPANET and you look at those sort of networks were intertwined even earlier in the 70s, I guess we between the military and higher education when it came to R&D at the same time as we've watched kind of these commercial platforms and platforms and other industries. Kind of overtake higher end. Maybe in in in some ways in terms of the use of these technologies to where when you look at the day-to-day operations and the use of communications on on networks in higher Ed. They're kind of backwards versus what's overtaken. Talk a little bit about some of the distinctions that you see as higher Ed as a potential platform for the use of your technologies. Eric Pulier Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think you're right that at first huge amounts of innovation flowing into education and the use of digital tools, notably Internet networks related. What what happened is that this industrial model of education was made more efficient and better, however. It is still the same model and that model ultimately taps out when you note that at the end of the model is still human that has to be imparted information, has to retain information, has to want to engage without getting bored, be motivated to find a social connection that unites people. Into joint activities, there's also. Of of factors that go into what makes somebody want to learn and ultimately advance and what what we find is that the plateau occurred. And while while there was advancement, it wasn't exponential anymore, people were like, OK, we're using these tools now. Let's make another lesson. Let's put another YouTube video up. Let's make another the learning management system and make it more efficient, but the the leaps were not there. I think what's happening now. It's truly a leap. We're recognizing that there are different ways to learn that are dramatically more effective when we can personalize that learning when we can introduce social factors into the learning process and when we can put gamification techniques that weren't possible with the other technologies to be as immersive. As engrossing and as memorable, so as we combine these technologies now, we're taking a leap in the capabilities of the use of Internet for engagement and applying it. To not only to education as we knew it, but to a new model of what it means to educate and what it means to teach. Kevin Hogan Yeah, well, let's break it down within higher edits itself. There are so many different kind of flavors of AR and VR that you can talk about. One of what intrigues me very much is the idea of simulation, you know, especially when you get into a lot of higher Ed, when you're you're talking about the medical, medical applications, other instances just involving. Remote teaching of industrial concepts and things like that is that something you think that will will drive it versus just kind of a a general conceptual, hey, let's get together in the metaverse and have a conversation? Eric Pulier Yeah, I think you've hit it exactly on the head. Simulation is, is, is probably the area that's most most frothy for innovation. Now let's talk about simulation across the spectrum of of what that could be applied to. So you have the simulation like what you described in medical. So that might be well, let's simulate an operation. Let's simulate a real world scenario where you have to do certain things in order, precisely the the right way and that experience doing it in this safe environment. Then translates into real world activities. It's a kind of training methodology. You have the same type of capability with AR as well as VR, whether you're immersed or whether you're overlaying information into a real world environment. And where you can train, there's also real time information that that then is not just about training or education, but it's about assisting during the actual act of applying care and operation or fixing an industrial piece of equipment where the AR overlays on that and tells you turn this knob left click this switch. Next do these things and it's showing you that. In real time overlaid on the physical environment, those are types of training and where simulation comes into play. But the other area that I think is less well understood, but equally important. Is simulation on EQ. Type environments where emotional interactions and human interactions can be simulated for dramatic effect. This goes for certain types of training of skills based training for for jobs, but also skills based training for very specific tasks in real world environments. Let me give you an example that I think is interesting. Recently had a conversation with the Economic Tourism Bureau of Dubai. It's one of the fastest growing tourism and economic phenomenons that we've ever seen and as they grow with every aspect of their economy, they also have about 40%. Turnover on the. Service worker jobs that have to that people. Have to be educated to, to, to. Today, there's a couple of issues. One people want to come into Dubai and they take their credentials. The other thing is they come in with maybe a a certain level of skill in one area, but they don't have the EQ or the ability to handle people. That's necessary to do the job properly and then of course there's the turnover after all of that training and and getting them to another level. How do you get somebody else up to speed? Fast enough when you can't even get enough people in the slots in the 1st place. Now with the new technologies that we're seeing coming together. We have a different layer on the Internet. We're really we're really integrating our digital and physical lives more fully. Our physical lives are made-up of people, places and things. Everywhere you look can be described as one of those things in the environment. As you look around right now, but in our in our digital lives prior certainly as we apply it to training or other. Aspects of using the Internet. It's basically an information. That's information you can ask for it. You can search for it. You can watch something. You can read something, but it's it's very different than the real world. We separate it in our mind and therefore less memorable, less engaging, more easily bored and and more easily faked. So as you as you get into this new world where you can create kind of metaverse like environments where you have an identity. You have an avatar where you have spatial awareness where you have social interactions with people where you have AI driven what are called non player characters that can then interact with you in different types of scenarios. Badging NFTS that can become digital objects that can then give you badges of achievement that can't be counterfeit, that you know that this person actually achieved this skill as these things come together. Now imagine I'm coming in and I'm being trained to run a a reservation system for Marriott with cranky people online with something that's broken at the same time. In a different language with two people hit, you know, asking me for something over here, and how am I going to handle all of this at once and know how to use this, this this actual. Console and how do I prove that? I've done that all of these things are going to be done in a fraction of the time with much greater efficiency and with incentive systems where I can now use that that capability to train other people and get credit for that. So that addresses the turnover problem as well. Kevin Hogan Let's talk a little bit about kind of the the physical logistics of this, this. Specifically, in our higher Ed space. Now we've we've both kind of dated ourselves by talking about the the early Internet and we've seen a lot of technologies predating the Metaverse and the use. Of goggles, I've been skeptical of the goggles for a long time. They're still uncomfortable for me. I can't put them over my my own set of specs here. At the same time, I've seen examples, especially in a higher edge space of. More of a laboratory setup where you're going into a room and you're immersed, maybe with flat screens that surround you and create another sort of sense of the metaverse. Where do you see the most effective way to actually experience your technologies? Is it going to be through a Google or is it going to be through a? Room or a? Combination or spell it out for me. Eric Pulier Well, yeah. I mean ultimately a combination, but I certainly don't think that the. The the the headsets and goggles are are the primary. I share your skepticism on where we are in the trajectory of making that usable at scale. First of all, they're too heavy at half the weight of of what they are now, which is already half the weight of what the word just recently, they're still too heavy. They'll be. At half the weight of that. Still too heavy, clunky separates you from your. Environment can only. You know, certain people get dizzy there. There's all sorts of things. That will lead to the inevitable conclusion that we are not close right now to that being ubiquitous. We are close, however, to other forms of hardware being ubiquitous, but notably the phone and laptops. So if you think about this as an evolution of existing technology to be more engrossing. To to to. Have a more memorable interactions, both spatially and socially, have a sense of ownership layer on top of that you can really think of it as an evolution of the web itself, which is why it's not bad to think of Web 2 going to Web 3.0 as a. Convergence of these technologies. So now imagine that every website has a come inside button. It's just a standard thing. You don't have to learn something. You have to put something on your head. You already know how to surf the web, but instead of it being boring and and something that feels informational, it becomes a. Place so you can say, hey, meet me over in the science lab or meet me at cars. Let's go learn about carburetor. Now you go inside and you hear someone out of your left ear. How do you do that? You click a button and it's a 2D website, but it's a 3D projection of a space that gives you a sense of place cause you can move. Right now we're stuck in a zoom. We are in a kind of a fight or flight biological pattern where in this? I'm looking at you and I'm intellectually saying you're probably not going to try to hurt me. Hope you won't. I'm gonna make that assumption. But on that assumption, I'm flowing very naturally intellectually. But but but. But physically, my brain is saying, well, you know, this is going to give me anxiety. It says it's a known phenomenon called zoom fatigue. You can only hang out here a certain time before you go. Oh my God. I gotta stop. COVID really wiped out as a species. Almost so we we, you know, and it wasn't just because of COVID, it's. Just a zoom. So what we what we need to do here? Is we need to recognize that when you free ourselves from the tyranny of the box of zoom and you have the agency. You don't need a headset, you can just now move around and now I'll hear you over here and I'll hear someone else over there and I'll say hey, look, let's go check this out. I want to learn about Newton's Apple under a tree. Let's go there. Let's watch the apple fall. Let's pick it up. Now I have it in my wallet. Now let's go somewhere else. So the fact of moving from place to place is like is like your eyes blinking. It recharges you, gives you a sense of spatial awareness. In memory that can't be associated with a normal stream of information that just becomes from the future into the past and and you have no way of marking it the psyche. Logically, this gives you a different way to connect to information and to translate it into memories. And so in in this context, what we're going to see is an evolution of the web, where the space itself psychologically is no less real than this physical space. Which means that independent of our existence, it exists so we can come in in a phone. We can come in in a laptop, we can come in an Oculus headset, if that's what you want to do. Or we can be in the car. And I can say, hey, I want to join this and then I just say I'm joining, but I'm just listening. I don't have to navigate, I don't have to worry about anything visual, but maybe someone who's there. Visual will see my avatar know that I'm there and have a presence, so it's really that we're going to start to look at learning environments. And the the devices will tend to trend to the cheapest, most prevalent and easiest to use. Kevin Hogan So it's almost agnostic. I mean you you can access the. Content of. Despite whatever device that you're using. So I mean, if you have the the luxury and the aptitude for it and. Oculus have at it. But you don't need it. You're saying, I mean, you can bring it down and that that that addresses another question I had for you about the issues of equity and equal access. Especially when it comes to higher education, there's. Still a lot. Different levels of, you know, digital equity that needs to be addressed when it comes to the use of technology for education. This just sounds like a solution. Eric Pulier I really believe it. Is a solution. It's a path towards a solution. Put it that way. It's an optimistic view, but I think it's the right one. If you look at where we're heading now, we have the ability to have a clear sight. On low cost ubiquitous networks that will cover the Earth, we really can see where that's coming. We have a clear sight to low cost devices that everyone can have and can reach that network. There are many areas of the world where that's not completed yet. Let's not overstate. But there's so many initiatives. That are going into place where the majority of the populations are going to be able to access these these networks. Now the question is now what kind of content will that be enabled? There's initiatives like the other fifty which we we. Which kind of came out of discussions at the X Prize Foundation that Intel has backed and others that are setting up edge networks at telco stations and developing countries that are giving free minutes and free content to educational content. So now you have the devices proliferating. You have the networks available where they need to be, and then you have. The the free ability. To access this content and the free content itself. Being open source to data available, so this is going to create a title wave of of Open Access, and now there's AI algorithms and really unbelievable advances in how you learn to give personalized learning. So it's just like yet another video of the same thing to the same person. You might get individualized teaching for your own. Level and and needs, so all of that I believe is coming together and you might call that top down and that what that's going to leave everyone with is not only ability to access that, but the ability to produce it. So now. But you're accessing that you're getting educated, you're getting trained. Now, how do you actually express that training and education or creativity to get paid? That's the next thing where we're also going to give far more democratized access to people, to democratize their creativity and their labor, and to be able to deliver actual. Forms of payment in the form of stable coins and other ways that we can move money to wallets at a mass scale. Kevin Hogan Yeah. How important is the? The behavior of the user in all of this. I know one of one of the the big challenges is you have to explain the Metaverse to me and we have to explain the Metaverse to everyone of of a certain age and in our generation. I look at the younger generations who have been raised in Minecraft and in roadblocks they don't really need to have the Metaverse explain to them right. Eric Pulier That's right. The metaverse as defined. And by people who made Fortnite and made Roblox and and wanted to make meta, et cetera, it has to be explained to people who are not inherently gamers. Because it's a gamified or underlying gaming system and it feels like a game and and and the controls are game like and people who aren't steeped in that either have to be explained. But you know why? That would be interesting to them and then trained to. Use it. But you don't have to train anybody to go and get a cup of coffee. Like if you go to anyone at almost any age, whether they like coffee or not, you don't have to explain what does that mean. It kind of means I want to sit with you. I want to have a chat and I and I want to talk about something that hopefully will benefit all of us, either shorthand to. Do that we can get to that. There's a new definition, or I guess a better definition I'd say of Metaverse, that is that simple, because everyone knows what a website is and everyone knows how to use it, and everyone can therefore. Be taught if that's the right word to to, to go to a better website. We started with flat pages that didn't do anything that were not database driven. They were just markup Markup language of some text and pictures. Then we went to database driven pages that were dynamic and and could be more interesting based on what you're asking for. Then we went to e-commerce and social what we called. Social is more like antisocial, but information that people post, you know, user generated content. Speaker Right. Eric Pulier So we advanced to a better website and no one didn't want a better website. It wasn't that hard. To understand well, guess what? Here we are. The new definition, the better definition of meter versus a better website. Why is it better? It's better because it's more memorable. It's more social. There's an ownership layer that's going to allow us to engage more fully and people are not going to have a hard time understanding it because you're not going to have to explain it. They're actually going to feel like the website is. If it doesn't have these attributes. Kevin Hogan So what are your suggestions to our listeners? You know, leaders at higher Ed institutions? Who are in charge of the technology? They're approached with all these various new platforms and experiences and acronyms. They have a student body who is already savvy with the use of these technologies as they're putting together their strategies for the next, say, three to five years. What are some of the, the? The first steps that they should consider. Eric Pulier The most important thing is to is to start. This is nothing that you can learn by evaluation on PowerPoint by putting vendors against one another by taking a class you can do all those things, but the real way that you're going to become proficient and therefore relevant, I believe to the next generation. Of of learning and of these technologies is to do. You don't have to do it. Well, and it doesn't cost you anything. It's to basically start. You can go to vadam.com, for instance, and make your own metaverse in in in 5 seconds and then you can invite people to it. What is it? It's a URL. Again, it's a better website and talk to one another. Then you could say, hey look, wouldn't it be interesting in this context? We already know how to use zoom. What if Zoom was a little better? What if the web was a little better? What if we had agency? And we can start to create experiences instead of streams of information that are that are really quickly to become boring. What if we were to create something that had more bite sized chunks that had gamification techniques into it? All of this information is available. All the technology is available, nothing is future states, and it's all ready to go now. And there are examples that you can try yourself, such as what genius is doing right, and Stanford and others that we admire and participate in collaborations. So what what I would recommend above all else is to put your toe on the. Water set expectations only to the notion of playing with it and learning yourself and what you're going to find very quickly is that you can't help but innovate, right? Once you're getting in there, you'll be like, oh, I wonder if we could do this and can we? Do that. And the answer. It's going to be, yes. Well, I knew. Kevin Hogan The the most difficult. Part of our conversation would be ending it. There's so many different. Aspects and rabbit holes we can go down, but the the insights that you've shared with us already today are more than enough for keeping my brain full. So I appreciate your time and your and your efforts and and and good luck going forward. Eric Pulier So fine. Thank you so much. I love being here and I appreciate your time today as well. Kevin Hogan And that's all there is for this month's episode of E Campus News's innovations and education. Be sure to subscribe for more episodes on your favorite podcast platform and go to ecampusnews.com for plenty of more content.