The Metaversity

Currently, the concept of a Metaversity is fluid, meaning different things in different contexts. The word can simply become the next buzz word in higher education, or it could become something much more meaningful and powerful. The lowest common denominator meaning of “metaversity” simply suggests one form or another of distance learning. More complex meanings include university systems that create a presence in virtual environments, such as Second Life^1,2,3.

A New Vision

Our vision of the metaversity is one that is driven by individual scholars – particularly graduate students, but certainly not limited to this group – as they seek to customize their own educational experience beyond the offerings of a single Institution of Higher Education (IHE). The metaversity, in this sense, is a set of resources or experiences drawn from a number of institutions in order to meet the individual needs of a scholar.

From this perspective, there is no way that a university can create a metaversity, it is not a single distance learning system, nor is it simply a VR presence. The metaversity is an epiphenomenon that occurs dynamically as a student attempts to overcome the limitations of a single educational organization – the student creates an “instance” of the metaversity that is highly personalized, evolving, and is designed to overcome the limitations of working within any single IHE.

Definition of a University

The definition of a university can be summed up as follows (from answers.com):

1. An institution for higher learning with teaching and research facilities constituting a graduate school and professional schools that award master’s degrees and doctorates and an undergraduate division that awards bachelor’s degrees.
2. The buildings and grounds of such an institution.
3. The body of students and faculty of such an institution.

Definition of a Metaversity

Our definition of a metaversity plays off the “uni-” in university, taking it to mean “one” — a single IHE. The “meta-” prefix suggests multiple instituions, such that a Metaversity is:

1. An ad hoc arrangement drawing together resources from a community of institutions to meet a specific educational or scholarly need that can not be met with the resources of a single university. It generally augments a degree program already in existence at a particular institution. This arrangement is designed and orchestrated by individuals within institutions rather than by the institutions themselves.
2. The media and strategies used to facilitate collaboration between the scholars involved in this arrangement.
3. The student(s), faculty, and other individuals involved in supporting this extra-university endeavor.

The Promise & Problems of Transdisciplinarity

By definition, metaversities are often interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary in nature (for a detailed discussion about transdisciplinary research, please go here). Conducting transdiciplinary research may seem like second nature to some students who have entered into graduate school already bending the boundary lines between different academic arenas, or with work experience that allows the student to apply a “different set of eyes” to a particular set of research questions. Yet there are a number of roadblocks to conducting serious transdisciplinary research as a graduate student.

For example, students may encounter institutional resistance from dissertation committees that are not prepared to evaluate research that extends beyond the boundaries of the student’s “home discipline”, they may not have access to a particular laboratory at their home campus, or the expertise required to pursue a line of research may be distributed across multiple institutions. Further, students and their faculty advisors may fear (and perhaps rightly so) that conducting transdiciplinary research early in one’s career may make finding a traditional academic job difficult.

Interdisciplinary and transdisiplinary research are becoming increasingly common ways for scholars and researchers to address complex problems. However, transdiciplinarity remains a poorly understood concept and the standards for training transdisciplinary researchers and evaluating that training are not fully developed.  Scientific American recently published an excellent article on the Science 2.0 movement, which also discusses some of the issues raised here.

Creating Context in a Decontextualized World

In addition to many of the practical problems associated with designing one’s own metaversity, there are a number of other issues that can be of concern to students who build this type of educational experience for themselves. For example, the traditional University serves to create a sense of place for students. The physical structure of the University, fellow students, activities, and so on provide an experiential fabric that encourages learning and personal development. In contrast, the metaversity experience may involve creating relationships with several institutions that are geographically separated, developing collegial relationships with non-students (i.e. professors at other institutions, government officials, support staff, programmers, specialists, etc.). While this process may fulfill the academic needs of the student, the sense of being situated in a single institution – and the benefits associated with this – may be diminished.

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Notes
1. http://www.koinup.com/Torley/work/115268/
2. http://opensimulator.wordpress.com/2009/02/05/osg-metaversity-second-class-meeting/
3. http://themetaversity.blogspot.com/

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