Metaverse Awareness of Turkish Generation Z Preservice Teachers

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine the metaverse awareness of Turkish Generation Z pre-service teachers with regard to several variables. A total of 1048 pre-service teachers born after 2000 participated in the study in which the descriptive survey model was used. The data were collected through a questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive statistical techniques. The findings revealed that the participants had low metaverse awareness and experience of this technology. Differing from the global Generation Z, they perceived the metaverse more in the context of game and entertainment. The participants thinking that the metaverse is partially beneficial for education emphasized its role as a technological tool that supports education rather than the role of the metaverse as an educational ecosystem itself. This finding may be related to the fact that the Turkish Generation Z preservice teachers were not fully aware of the virtual and digital technology phenomenon such as the metaverse and they were not aware of its educational potential. The low awareness of the T Turkish Generation Z preservice teachers about the metaverse can be considered as a deficiency in terms of compliance of the Turkish Education System with the Information Age. It was concluded as a result of this study that the awareness of Turkish Generation Z preservice teachers, who differ from their global counterparts in some features, about virtual and digital technology is not yet ready for the transformation of Turkish Education System to into a completely virtual and digital form. Thus, this unity should be ensured through intermediate forms such as the Hybrid Model.

Educational Advances in the Metaverse: Boosting Learning Through Virtual and Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence

“…Unlike its main competitor, Unreal Engine, Unity offers a friendlier learning curve, essential to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration. Although Unreal Engine is renowned for its superior graphics capabilities, Unity excels in flexibility and cross-platform compatibility [36]. This is essential for our project as we seek to develop urban environments that are accessible on a variety of devices.…”

Generation Z competencies: A case study of a Blended Intensive Programme (BIP)

“…17th International Scientific Conference INPROFORUM Challenges and Opportunities in the Digital World, November 2 -3, 2023, České Budějovice However, given the output of the literature that identifies Generation Z as tech-savvy, image-oriented and using social networking styles (Akpinar et al, 2022;Brindha & Priyadarshini, 2020;Marshall & Wolanskyj, 2020), this generation will also need to focus more on communication skills themselves, which are not seen as a priority by companies at the moment.…”

“…This group is strongly connected through social networks and is very good with computers and the internet (Marshall & Wolanskyj, 2020). Connected with technological background they incline towards a visual and image-oriented style (Akpinar et al, 2022;Brindha & Priyadarshini, 2020). This approach can be used in training and development methods through Blended Learning approaches that merge online and face-to-face learning methods (Tolstikova et al, 2023).…”