Metaverse in Higher Education – A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting restrictions, the need for a rapid conversion of teaching to digital formats has increased significantly. Not all teaching formats and content are suitable for traditional video conferencing, so the Metaverse, an interconnection of virtual worlds, has experienced a significant upswing in the education sector. Therefore, we conduct a systematic literature review to determine the current state of research on the Metaverse in higher education and to identify its definitions, benefits and challenges, types, and technologies. The initially found 5,539 papers were systematically filtered to 92 fully coded articles. Our findings reveal a lack of standardized definitions, early-stage prototyping, a lack of prescriptive design knowledge, and a lack of pedagogical and methodological concepts and blueprints. These findings reveal significant research gaps and lead to the derivation of future research streams.