Honoris United Universities Celebrates Five Years of Education for Impact in Metaverse Event
September 23 2022 – Mentions of the metaverse in the private sector increased by 40% in the first quarter of 2022 alone. In 2021, metaverse-related companies reportedly raised upward of $10 billion, more than twice as much as they did in the previous year. As we saw in previous shifts in technology such as the emergence of the internet followed by social media, mobile, and cloud, novel strategies can quickly become the norm. It is clear that this transformation is one to stay, and its potential is undeniable.
That’s why, in July this year, we celebrated the fifth anniversary of Honoris in a unique metaverse event in the virtual Honoris Africa Campus, powered by Gather Town and bringing together our 3,500 staff across all our institutions. The month-long event included masterclasses, events, interactive games, and most importantly recreating the serendipity of real interactions for the people of Honoris across borders.
Recent projections cite the opportunity for the metaverse to generate up to $5 trillion in impact by 2030, equivalent to the size of the world’s third-largest economy today, Japan. It is shaping up to be the biggest new growth opportunity for several industries in the coming decade, given its potential to enable new business models, products, and services. In academic virtual learning alone, it is estimated that it could have an impact between $180 and $270 billion.
Most large players in the sector have projected that a single, global metaverse is at least a decade away, but the opportunities for education, particularly increasing access and quality in our sector, is here today. At Honoris United Universities, this aligns to the digital transformation deployed in each institution across Africa, and a natural evolution of our mission to deliver innovative, relevant models of education throughout the student journey to improve the learning outcomes of its students.
Group CEO, Dr Jonathan Louw, commented, “The building of metaverse realities should never be a substitute for the real world. But it is now simply too big to be ignored. We as leaders have an opportunity to shape the metaverse in a way that fosters greater social cohesion, reduces inequality, widens access to education, and acts as a catalyst for social mobility. We will continue to dare to explore, test, journey and expand our horizons. The transition into the metaverse will catalyse virtual education delivery as we begin to embrace the opportunity to increase free movement, peer-to-peer interaction, transactions, user-generated content and world-building.”
At its most basic, the metaverse will have three features: a sense of immersion, real-time interactivity, and user agency. Ultimately, the full vision of the metaverse will allow for interoperability across platforms and devices, concurrency with thousands of people interacting simultaneously, and use cases spanning human activity well beyond gaming. We as leaders in education have an opportunity to shape the metaverse in a way that fosters greater social cohesion, reduces inequality, widens access to education, and acts as a catalyst for social mobility.