With the advent of virtual environments and communities, the metaverse has been rapidly expanding in recent years as businesses and industries have begun to see the value and opportunities this technology provides. In order to ensure this technology is utilized to its full potential, further study on the best practices, challenges, and future directions is required. The Research Anthology on Virtual Environments and Building the Metaverse considers the latest research regarding the metaverse and discusses potential issues and benefits of the technology. The book also examines strategies and tactics businesses and companies can use when implementing the metaverse into their operations. Covering key topics such as immersion, augmented reality, and virtual worlds, this major reference work is ideal for computer scientists, business owners, managers, industry professionals, researchers, scholars, academicians, practitioners, instructors, and students.

This book addresses recent research trends concerning the role of the Metaverse in advancing the education and finance sectors from various perspectives. These trends are explored through multiple case studies employing diverse analytical approaches. The chapters aim to aid scholars and postgraduate students in pursuing future research in this domain and identifying potential developments in Metaverse applications.

Accompanying The Metaverse: A Critical Introduction in CRC Press’ new The Metaverse Series, this book explores the ways in which the Metaverse can be used for education and learning, as well as how it is different from virtual reality (VR) application development. For example, institutions and tutors can make use of the Metaverse space to represent themselves in it or create their own content and share experiences, whilst students can access a wider range of material, learn within appropriate settings and create content to support their own and others’ learning. Key Features: • Provides practical advice from the authors’ collective three decades of work and experience in VR and Metaverse learning and education. • Examines different approaches to learning that are relevant in a VR and Metaverse context, including theoretical and practical approaches to pedagogy. • Suggests different approaches to learning that might be used and explores learning in practice in the metaverse – from early versions such as computer-supported collaborative learning and action learning through to more recent practices such as games and gamification and the use of problem-based learning in virtual worlds. • Examines a number of advantages of learning in the metaverse such as the opportunity to be inclusive towards different approaches to learning, the value of affordances, peer-to-peer learning and genres of participation. This book is aimed primarily at practitioners in the learning and education field, and those who set policy and commission work. It may also be of interest to parents, managers, other interested professionals, students, researchers and lay readers.