Applying Lessons from Digital and Gamified Learning to the Educational Metaverse A Systematic Review

The concept of the metaverse, an immersive virtual environment, holds significant promise for revolutionising educational practices. Strategies of online learning and gamification are at the forefront of this development. These developments have the potential to dissolve learning and geographical boundaries, provide more accessible and effective educational opportunities, and help reduce the current inequalities associated with traditional learning models. Considering that the metaverse is still in its nascent stages, this paper seeks to infer its potential impacts on education by examining existing studies on online learning and gamified education. By conducting a systematic review of literature, we have extrapolated the key benefits and challenges associated with using digital and gamified learning environments. A systemic review approach was employed to analyse and review 68 articles from two recognised digital databases, namely Google Scholar and ScienceDirect. The results of the review provide an in-depth understanding of the state of metaverse education in our current landscape and includes an overview of the attitudes held towards online learning, the studied outcomes of online learning and digitally assisted learning, the challenges associated with online learning and metaverse education, and the studied outcomes of metaverse-based gamified education and their effect on the development of 21st century skills.