Metaverse and Accounting Education: Potentials and Opportunities in the Accounting Internship Courses
Amer Qasim, Ghaleb Awad El Refae, Shorouq Fathi Kamel Eletter · 2023
Higher education has gone through significant changes since 2020 due to the social distancing regulations related to the COVID-19 outbreak and backed up by the existence of accelerated innovations in information and communication technologies (ICT). As a result, many universities were obliged and smoothly went online for a certain period of time and exploited new information and communication technologies to overcome the obstacles of conducting face-to-face classes and meetings. In this case, lectures and meetings were conducted online using communication platforms (for example, MS teams and zoom) and exams took place using online proctoring software. Nevertheless, it seems that stay-at-home protocols was an opportunity to experiment new methods of work as well as study. Keeping in mind these changes in the delivery mode of study, one might raise the question of what next? Is this the best so far that ICT can offer for online learning? There is no doubt that what have been exploited so far by universities regarding online learning has only scratched the surface of the potentials offered by information and communication technologies regarding higher education. This paper discusses the opportunity of virtual learning as an extension and enhancement of online learning. The potentials of the Metaverse provides opportunity for a more interactive platform that imitates face-to-face learning. The world of metaverse provides an excellent opportunity to, at least for the time being, experiment the possibility of virtual university, virtual classroom, virtual labs, and virtual internship programs.