Moving ‘towards’ the Metaverse, and the implications for language teaching

• What does the metaverse mean for us as language teachers or researchers and what is it?
• Is this really something new or a rebranding of another idea?
• What opportunities and/or drawbacks does the metaverse have for us and our students?

This presentation will begin with an examination of the fictional history of the metaverse, followed by technical innovations that led to our current stage of development, ranging from text-based creations, to 2D avatar-based environments, and on to low-immersion Virtual Worlds, all of which led to what many are (erroneously) calling the Metaverse today.

Presenter: Dr. Randall Sadler (Ph.D) is Associate Professor of Linguistics and Director of TESL and ESL at the University of Illinois. He teaches courses on telecollaboration, VR and language learning, and teaching L2 reading and writing. He has published in journals including CALICO Journal, ReCALL, LLT, Computers & Education, ELT, and in numerous edited volumes. His books include Virtual Worlds, Telecollaboration, and Language Learning (2012, Peter Lang), the Handbook of Informal Language Learning (2020, Wiley Blackwell), and New Ways in Teaching with Games (2020, TESOL). He is the current President of CALICO, the Computer-Assisted Language Instruction Consortium.