Creating an immersive course

What if online education could help the learning process? For the Science Fiction and Media course at Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication (ESHCC), two lectures were created in a metaverse (virtual environment) where students were instructed by an AI Avatar on their own time and at their own location.

The project

Within this project, Dr Étienne Augé (ESHCC) collaborated with CLI project manager Shen Liu and CLI student assistant Zoë van Wingerden. A pilot was conducted with two classes in his metaverse for the Science Fiction and Media course. The aim was to investigate how these new technologies can contribute to accessible and personalised education for students, and how they can save the teacher time.

For this purpose, Étienne created his own metaverse: a virtual environment where students can look around and where an AI avatar guides them through the course material. Étienne himself selected the knowledge he wanted to teach. Three topics were offered per class. Students could watch videos and read course material. Afterwards, they could ask questions to the AI avatar, who provided personalised answers using generative AI. At the end of the lesson, students were able to take a practice test. This practice test had various options, such as Multiple Choice, Jeopardy and Wordle. An interactive way to test the knowledge they had acquired!

Result

The first class took place on 30 April 2025 and the second on 21 May 2025. Of the 35 students who tried out the new tool, 20 completed the evaluation. Contrary to expectations, the students were not entirely positive. Many of them indicated that they preferred on-campus education and missed the human factor in the virtual environment. However, they did appreciate the flexibility of the tool and recognised its implications for students who were unable to come to campus due to restrictions. 

Future steps

The technology will be tested again, this time during the Futures Studies master's course. Looking ahead, Étienne ultimately wants to develop a complete course that complements existing MOOCs and possibly even create an EUR Metaverse. To achieve this, it is important to find the right tool and to continue experimenting with these types of tools.