Dr. Jasmin Cowin
Hello, and welcome to WHERS 2022. My name is Dr. Jasmin Cowin and today you will be part of a transdisciplinary discussion on the future of higher education and extended reality. The next normal metaverses, virtual beings, AI cloning. Science fiction author Neil Stevenson coined the term Metaverse in his 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, presenting a 3d virtual world in which people represented as avatars could interact with each other and artificial intelligent agents. The UniRanks platform is built in a way to make it possible for everyone to contribute and to be an integral part of a project of ranking through the open rank concept and the ranking committee to ensure a strong methodology and fairness.

The ranking committee comes with a structure to heart allow higher education stakeholders to join all over from everywhere. Now, how my technologies such as metaverses impact higher education and university rankings? And that is what our panel we'll explore with our different specialties. Here we have Dr Joaquin Rodriguez Alvarez, Dr. Moshe Vardr, Amany Alkhayat, Dale Fletter and me, Dr. Jasmin Bey Cowin. Dr. Alvarez is joining us, I think from Spain. And he is mostly concerned with ethics and the human created tools, which can bring systems of inequality, because I think we discussed this AI can crystallize or multiply unconscious bias and behavior. So, Dr. Alvarez, we are very interested to hear what you have to say, and to tell us and then afterwards, we will chime in. And I would say we keep we have like three to four minutes for you to explore what you need to say, and then we will collectively contribute.

Dr. Joaquin Alvarez
Thank you so much. First of all, thank you for having me in this wonderful panel. And as you said, my research topic during the last year has been the social impacts of advanced technology, especially artificial intelligence, and from my approach, what we have to take into account is that technology, it's an ambivalent phenomenon, it should be mainly understood, from my perspective, like an amplifier of human will. So, it can expand our horizons, we can use it to heal our society, to face front to the main challenges that we are facing from as humanity, as ecosystems. But at the same time, technology can also provide ways to crystallize current systems of oppression. And this is something that we have to take into account when we discuss the evolution of higher education, how we educate, how we transfer knowledge.

Because till now, and this is important to underline, the scientific agendas have been mainly those of white men, bourgeoise, that have been occupying these positions in academia. So, it was just a tiny reflection of the necessities of society. And when we talk about these technologies, we should be discussing how they can provide us new approaches, how we can include new people, how we can truly develop an inclusive and diverse in the metaverse to transform our reality, but at the same time, we also know about how human bias, machine bias, can condition the way we approach reality and how technology has this ability to shape our awareness and the way that we comprehend our context. So, we are in this crow’s road moment that our generation is called to the side, how we are going to use technology, what are going to be its aims, its values, and how we can put in service of society. And at the same time, we will have the ability to govern, to manage all those negative externalities that are also associated with that technological phenomenon. Thank you so much, and I give you back the word.

Dr. Jasmin Cowin
So, I think that you opened up a lot of interesting points. It's an amplifier of human real. And, the question of inclusivity, which I think what the UniRank system is trying to do, you know that there is a more inclusive approach to how we rank and then if we go into a metaverse, how might that even look like and I'm very interested also, when you talked about this crossroad moment, aims and values. So, is there anyone? Dale, Amany, Dr. Vardr Moshe, would you like to? Would you like to speak to this? Yes.

Dr. Moshe Vardi
So, we believe fair and justifiably to kind of flaws that we've discovered. AI, for example, is biased okay. Now, of course, the answer is AI is not biased. There is an old phrase, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to repeat it. Unfortunately, what we're seeing now, is machines that learn from history, are doomed to repeat it, because they're just learning from the data. If we have in United States, for example, justice system with deep historical record of injustice, inequity towards certain groups, then machine learning is just going to learn it. So, the problem is not that somehow the technology is flawed. The problem is that, as you mentioned, technology an amplifier. And the answer is that we know there are certain things in human behavior, we would like to amplify, the other things we do not want to amplify. And if you have a system that blindly amplify everything, then we get very unexpected result. And we blame technology, but the technology does exactly what technology does in this case.

Dr. Jasmin Cowin
So Amany, I saw you nodding would you like to contribute?

Dr. Amany Alkhayat
Yeah, so, I love how Dr. Moshe, and of course, Dr Joaquin, talking about being an amplifier. And then, in relation also, the history and attributes machine repeat itself. And one of the very interesting projects that I've seen in the decentralized Metaverse is Alethia AI. And so at least they are either not trying to reinvent the wheel. As we know in the past, like in 2016, I think Microsoft, they released a chatbot on Twitter, which actually became racist in 24 hours, so they had to remove it and the Alethea AI that they're probably trying to achieve that dream which is, you know, being an amplifier by giving people the opportunity to train their AI. So it's an NFT community in a decentralized metaverse. It's called Noah's Ark. And they started with machine learning and one of many robust language models like including GPT three, but then when we started interacting with these AIs, they actually started to be rude, but then we tried to train it to be polite.

And the aim of Alethea AI is to use these AI characters to create services in the metaverse and so they always stress the fact that we are going only to choose humans will train AI in a perfect way, in a good way. We need AI characters that perform good. Like in a better way in the metaverse and they actually trained all the Aletheans, or the Alethea AI members by providing them with master classes, so that they would know how to train those AI characters. So, they started with GPT three. And when you're this GPT V is trained on trillions and trillions of language parameters. But then there is the concept of the human factor that would actually guide the AI on how to use conversational AI in the metaverse and also, we create the personalities, we create the filters at the same time. So yeah, I think this is one of the promising projects in the metaverse.

Dr. Jasmin Cowin
Yes, they are because you know, this brings forth, what is good, and what is bad, there might be definite differences in cultural, personal, and collective ways of looking at the same thing and deciding this is good, and this is bad. And then of course, in our space, time physical presence, this might change, because we might have found that it was very good, why we were living it. Whereas 30 years later, it turns out that it was really bad. So, Dale, you said, you raised your hand. So, we would like

Dale Fletter
I'd like to offer two things. Number one, I think the metaphor of an amplifier is perhaps not as good as saying a mirror, that many of the things we're talking about our failures in society, their social failures, that the AI picks up, and then reflects back to us. And we don't always like what we see, even though we don't see it in ourselves. So, I think there's that aspect of it. And also, to this is all computer mediated communication. And scholars like Sherry Turkle, we're very good about talking about how in email communications and all of these other computer mediated communications, meta linguistics are lost, and therefore people tend to behave not as well as they might in a real face to face situation. So, we have to grapple with all of those issues.

Dr. Jasmin Cowin
Well, I love the idea of this collective artificial intelligence is to show to us a Dorian Gray type mirror, where we don't really like what we see. But once we see it, it is so abhorrent that we pretend it isn't there, which brings me to Dr. Moshe Vardr, from Rice University. Because we talked about the societal impact of technology. And you said, are we deploying technology for tech’s sake? Or is it for society's sake? And then you talked about the bottom two thirds, which is actually not a bottom that is most of the people are disenfranchised? And how do we create education systems that serve everyone? So, Dr. Vardi?

Dr. Moshe Vardi
So, I consider myself a repentant computer scientist. And the metaphor I'd like to use there is a novel from the mid-80s Ender's Game. And spoiler alert, I'll tell you now the kind of the end of the story end of things he playing video game. Little does he realize that he's actually he and his friends are fighting an intergalactic war, when the winning the video game. They've actually destroyed the civilization. And that's the realization that hits on him towards the end of the book. And then there was a follow up novel, how does he deal with it? And myself, and many of my friends, computer science, we're having fun. You know, this is playing with computer, it's like playing with puzzles, the computer has very clear rules, you have to figure out how to solve the puzzle. And we are enjoying it. And he thought this is technology is good. And more technology is better. And most technology is best. And we did not realize that we are changing the world. And not necessarily for the better. So, I think social media is a wonderful example of kind of technology that people don't realize. I don't think it was my intention, but it was not realized that this idea let's have I think some people call it frictionless sharing. So sharing is good. You ask people, what do you think about sharing information? Yeah, sharing is good. Do you want to have frictionless sharing? No, that sounds bad. Let's reduce friction. Let's make it very easy to share. And what did you find out? We won our societal experiment; we find out that we tend to share more things that have strong emotional resonance in particular outrage.

Wow. This happened. Hillary Clinton, you know, eating children in the basement of a pizzeria. Wow, this is horrible. Clickshare. Okay. And so, we have explosion of information, which it's more than just an amplifier, it's more than just a meal. Because if it reflects certain things in a different way, then it's a DISTORTING MIRROR in some sense. So, you end up the picture you'll see on social media is not a perfect mirror, it's a mirror. But it's a mirror to tend to reflect certain things more intently and certain things less intensely. Okay. So now we're dealing, for example, with a very polarized society in many parts of the world. And it's become very clear that social media is at the heart of this polarization. And now the genies out of the box, and no one knows how to put the genie back in the box. And this suggests that we need kind of reorientation, how we think about technology, okay. We need to think how do we have technology serve humanity, there is a science fiction story. It's called to serve humanity. And it plays on the duality of the meaning to serve humanity, we think the intuitive thing to serve humanity is to do something good for humanity. But in that context, is to serve humanity as a meal.

And so, is technology serving us? Or are we just serving? Are we serving humanity to technology? And so, what is hitting me now that we have to start talking about technology is what problem are we trying to solve? Not I have a great technology. Let me deploy it and see what happens. But let's try to solve polling, we want to use AI in education, by all means. Let's be very clear, what are the problem? What problems in education are we trying to solve? And let's make sure that technology does solve this problem, and does not have undesirable effects, adverse consequences. And let's not run experiments on humanity, which we do have done. If you look, for example, one of the outcomes, one of the adverse consequences social media is that between 2007 and 2017, in the United States, suicide rate for ages 10 to 14, children, young teenagers, suicide rate has tripled. Which to me is absolutely shocking finding and people cannot find any explanation. I mean, it's very hard to run experiments.

So, we don't have a direct causation. But the only explanation of what has changed? Well, this was just around the time that the iPhone was introduced. And within a year, the Facebook page came up on the iPhone and teenager wanted to have a smartphone. And these are the consequences. So, let's make sure that we are really technology is for the benefit of society. And you know, we are used to do in this with drugs, for example, we said, okay, here is a pharmaceutical that may benefit. Let's first of all on safety test, we have we go to do a clinical trial, there is phase one, phase two, phase three, we don't just say okay, you know what, let's deploy the vaccine. And let's see what happened. We're an experiment, see what happens. And at the end of the also, we think about higher education. The phenomena that we observe over the last 30 years was that higher education served socioeconomically. And I don't like the phrase bottom because indicate these people are less valuable.

But if you look at the in terms of socioeconomic status in terms of income, then roughly in the United States, about 1/3 of the population has a cold four-year college degree. And by large, these people have done well economically, that is held here that wages have caught up who's in fact, you know, the cost of living, it's even more in real terms of income has increased. But for the bottom two sales, the income, real income and constant dollar has actually, it was either flat or actually declined. And I think that is hidden in deep into statistic of the that you dive into. But if you go to men without college education, so these are called working class men, so they have high school or less, between ages 25 to 45 to 55, which is after they're done most of the time with education, and before early retirement. About 20% of these men are not working. They have been basically left by the wayside of our knowledge-based economy.

Dr. Jasmin Cowin
That's right, You and I, we talked about this and then I want Dale to come in. And Yuval Harare, who is a philosopher at the Hebrew University, he wrote a book. And he coined the term, you know, the useless class, right? So, this is not a particularly friendly terminology. But when we talk about people being left behind if they educate. So, if we automate everything, then how do you take a truck driver and create a job opening is a meta-Baroque designer at the age of 53, that's probably not going to be a very successful endeavor, because it really requires a very different skill set. Not to say that a truck driver couldn't learn it. But depending on your age, the number of years it will take you to learn it will put you maybe six years later, as you know, someone who can do it, but then, you know, you might want to go and retire. But Dale, you had something that you when I saw you raise your hand, I want to hear what you have to say.

Dale Fletter
Yeah, I want to make two comments about what Moshe was saying. And the first is that being a little bit older, has some advantages. One of those is that you get a certain longitudinal experience with life. And one of the things that surprised me that I was not able to predict was the rapid deployment and use of cell phone technology around the world. And that has been an amazingly leveling effect I would say for many populations. However, what I still struggle with and I believe is still a problem, even in the US is that the access to wider technology, which would be laptop computers, which are necessary for higher education is still can be a barrier for many people's socio-economic barriers.

So, while all of my students show up with cell phones, sometimes they are showing up with less-than-ideal laptops that that hinder their ability to follow along in the class. So, these barriers to technology still exist and must be addressed, particularly as we move into a Metaverse thing, if we're going to be expecting people to have sophisticated head mounted displays, that is going to become yet another barrier for students in a metaverse. So that was the first thing that Moshe made me think of, and the other when he was talking about the copying, and things of that sort, there's been an erosion of I would say, fundamental ethics when it comes to intellectual property. One of the things I struggle with is that students I don't think recognize plagiarism in the way that they used to in prior generations. And this notion of information wants to be free, gets applied all over the place, and they ended up just feeling that they're going to do anything they can to get through a course, even if that means copying answers from some other place.


Dr. Jasmin Cowin
Well, that's Yeah. Dr. Alvarez. You know, ethics is a big field. What do you think happened in those students’ minds, because I also see a lot of this, you know, where we're paraphrasing becomes a creative process, instead of the thinking and actually coming, synthesizing, analyzing and then creating something new. So, what happened to our ethics specialist?

Dr. Joaquin Alvarez
I believe that we are basically observing a transition between ways of understanding reality, ways of learning and ways of communicating. And so nowadays in this society, from my approach, we are in the middle of kind of technological fetish. We believe that the more technological we are the best we are, we introduce massive amounts of technology in the educative process, but we are losing the basics. The students have a struggle to differentiate plagiarism from what is not but they also struggle to write for example, in a university level, syntactic things, grammar things, I mean, this is kind of traumatic, and we have to understand that also, they are operating some set of meta narratives that generate the necessity to include technologies and this is also having, as the colleague said before, the applications for the digital braids for the working class for the subordinate class, and I was for example, mesmerized this year during confinement. I was living in Mexico. The Mexican government at one point they realized that they cannot translate move the whole education system into their computers into laptops.

Because most part of Mexican families, they didn't have access to this technology. So, what they did was basically using TV, they open channels for each course. And they start from there. And so many times, we don't need so many advanced technologies, but we have to be realistic with the material conditions of our society, in order to promote equality, that it's one of the biggest values that we shall promote from the education system and the higher education system. And in relation with these tiny manifestations of change in the minds of our students, this generation have changed so many things, but also, they have ways to express creativity, that they believe that it's much greater than my generation, for example. So, I mean, there are things that we can criticize, but the new generations are also to admire, especially in these difficult situations that we are passing through, I mean, they are demonstrating that they are an active part.

Dr. Jasmin Cowin
That actually segues, Dr. Alvarez, when you talked about inequality and access, right, because, you know, in Mexico, not everyone could have a laptop, you couldn't put it on Zoom, and Amany Alkhayat, who is the doctoral student at Columbia University, when we had our pre power meeting, we talked about educational hurdles and challenges. And Amany, you spoke about how can we create immersive experiences that leverage engagement and equity, and we should add to that access, you know, because you know, you're talking a whole new skill level, it's not in this isn't only for students, I want you to think in the greater sense. All of us are in a learner seat. So, when you are talking about access and equity and creating these immersive experiences, like the faculty to remember, us, we need to be included not only the students in these hurdles, and that analysis, so Amany, could you, could you give us a little overview on this topic for like about three to four minutes, and then we come back together as a panel.

Dr. Amany Alkhayat
Okay. Um, so the hurdles and challenges. That was a difficult question two years ago, when we were trying to introduce technology and pedagogy to educators in a way that fits their curriculum and teaching strategies meaningfully, and link those to students’ real-life experiences. So, at the very beginning, when the pandemic erupted, we were actually surprised by the fact that we had to give live workshops on how to use Zoom in the classroom, which actually can be viewed on YouTube. And we were not giving these workshops from a pedagogical perspective. We were just trying to teach educators whoever wanted help to use that technology. And we all know; we agree that the most important influencer in the classroom is the teacher. But teachers are overworked and underpaid, as, as my colleague said before, like there's a lack of accessibility to computers. And also talking about plagiarism. I also, I'd like to talk about plagiarism also in a moment. And so immersive technologies are really great. They also appeal to many students who are tech savvy. And it immerses the students into meaningful learning experiences if teachers are equipped with the pedagogical knowledge.

But if educators don't have accessibility to quality, professional training, to deliver and engage students and prepare them for 21st century skills, many students will be struggling. And this will also be reflected in terms of work readiness. I mean, we always say that many students are tech savvy, but they're not at tech savvy. And they understand technology better than teachers, which have been actually talking to many educators and they actually recognize this fact. But this can be also sometimes a stumbling block in terms of student’s expectations, and teachers’ ability to bridge this gap and understanding what are we preparing our students for? So, I remember asking some school students who always get high grades in their exams about their teachers use technology. But the students perspectives were the teachers during remote learning were struggling to use technology effectively, which made their classroom less engaging and in general, students are more geared towards earning high scores, then learning and applying skills and being creative. And we see that many educators are falling behind what students are finding engaging, but I'm optimistic about the future of education because I think the metaverse will disrupt education, where there will be competitions from many formal and informal educational institutions. And I mean, if we look at the past where many online platforms have been doing for years, like Udemy, and stuff like that, they give students the skills that they need and build their portfolios or resumes.

But we need to understand the cultural, cognitive and social perspectives to cobuild. The end cocreate knowledge was with students through context-based learning simulations and other pedagogical strategies. We need to understand that students, they learn differently, they have different thinking styles, assumptions, cultural differences and expectations. And one of the things that I love about virtual reality and augmented reality is that you as an educator, can cobuilt and Co create knowledge with your students, you can bridge the knowledge gap by engaging them and understanding their perspective. And one of the things that actually happened when during the pandemic is that many of my students didn't have access to computers, they were on their phones. And I've been like crazy about VR platforms. And some of them were actually crying that they can't go back to their countries, they have struggle, focusing in the remote classroom, because of these emotions that they had during the pandemic. And I said, Okay, let's go to masala hubs. And they actually went there. And it was like, freedom for them. And I started using zoom to engage them into activities using virtual reality, although many of them didn't have access to it. But they are watching it. And we created knowledge together, we created stories.

We did roleplay, and stuff like that. And so yes, sometimes we don't have, or my art students don't have the technology. But because it's our passion as educators, we need to involve them. And we need to make our classroom more engaging. Some of them might not understand that because fact I teach ESL, so I teach students like very young students and very old students, we have to kind of work it out, or work around it. But I think as we are all of us try to understand our capabilities and our goals, and how technology can achieve our goals in terms of engaging our students preparing them for the 21st century skills. That would be a great

Dr. Jasmin Cowin
Thank you Amany. Because we, you know, we work together a lot trying to explore these spaces for co-constructing knowledge. Because I think that the biggest change is going to be you know how the education profession in and by itself will be seen. And I think one of the greatest concerns is how will we get paid for the education that we have amassed? And we are now in the metaverse. So perhaps we are teaching an online course for a university that's halfway around the world. You know, so are we going to get paid into cryptocurrency? I mean, there's a lot of questions. But anyway, so my panel, who would like to – yes.

Dale Fletter
sorry, I don't mean to monopolize. But the I think you're bringing up great points, Jasmin, and the one I'd like to amplify, is ultimately a barrier. When I was doing remote teaching. We tend to believe that if we're in the metaverse that somehow our physical or meet where that exists, doesn't matter anymore. But that's not true. When I was teaching my students, their parents would walk in their roommates would suddenly have a pillow fight or something like that. And of course, that would be very distracting to them, and they couldn't concentrate on what we were trying to do. So, the barriers are not just technological, but also architectural in that these students sometimes get tremendous benefit by being taken out of their socio-economic environments and brought to a university. The other thing that I'm very aware of is when you talk about building skills. One of the things that I point out is that we've had a lot of information, a lot of educational opportunity available on the internet for many years now. And it has not been that transformational. So just having the information available is not necessarily the same as translating that into marketable skills. So, there's something more that I think we have to focus on rather than just bringing them the information that they need.

Dr. Jasmin Cowin
Yes, Moshe, if you please contribute and then I will ask Dr. Alvarez a question

Dr. Moshe Vardi
well, we can think of previous technological revolution in education. So, when I was an undergraduate student, the new technology was overhead projector. And for the professor said, this is great, you'll rebuild the lecture once and then you can just reuse it. But I remember sitting as a freshman student, and the professor was flipping the transparencies in a furious space and just following up was incredible struggle. And it turned out that using a blackboard or whiteboard has an advantage you cannot write too fast. So, there is a natural speed dampener okay, you have to write and the students can follow. And also, you could dispute you can ask a question you can Oh, okay, we are here to respond to your question. While if there was a transparency, then this is it. This is what you have. You cannot deviate from it.

And well, that's an improvement. I don't think so. And then we move many people says, oh, now we don't need to use transparent. We use PowerPoint. Is this a good way to teach? I doubt it. It's convenient in many cases, because once you prepare it, you can just reuse the same material. But it's not clear that this is necessarily an advancement. MOOCs, people say MOOCs and then we discover the completion rate was about 5%. So why because it takes enormous discipline to try to do this. You know, one of the things that a classroom create is a social structure. And MOOCs didn't do it. So, we turn out the real application of online technology has been successful in online master's degree, because you get more mature students, they have better learning skills. And, and they have some very successful online muscles program. But just because something is okay, it's online, it's virtual, doesn't translate to necessarily to improvement in education.

Dr. Jasmin Cowin
So, I wanted to ask Dr. Alvarez, you know, because we brought all of this together. But now I am very curious on the ethics of it all, because we are now as educators in other people's spaces, not just virtually but actually because I remember and Amany used to talk like to someone who experiences I remember I was teaching online, and all the sudden I found myself in someone else's dorm room where somebody else was getting dressed, it was very uncomfortable, it was a male. And I mean, I pointed out, you know, I said, look, I can see everything and so can everyone else. But, you know, when we have a controlled space, like a lecture hall, we know who was there, we know why they are there. And they are there because they signed up to be there. And you know, but with the metaverse not only to be, you know, an avatar can be powered by somebody completely different behind it, right? Because I don't know who has that computer. So, if you could quickly speak to the ethics of it all.

Dr. Joaquin Alvarez
The ethical dimension, it's complex, and also the approach because, for example, I have a European approach in this sense. For us, the confinement was specifically difficult because for example, we were unable to require our students to turn off the camera because for us this is clearly understand that it's an invasion of privacy. I mean, you cannot record someone private home. And even we discovered that confinement and all these things that we have been through it was a class privilege. I have students that they have a perfect space in the rooms. I mean, they were quiet with illumination. They I have other students that they were sharing rooms that were noisy, and even there are students where they are experimenting violence on their home. So, we have to take into account that we as universities, as physical universities, we provide also a safe space, and we are an equalizer of some home experience. And technology, of course can provide this quality in some levels, but also, it's some problems related with access. So, the ethical part is that a human experience will be reinforced through human experience from my perspective.


Dr. Jasmin Cowin
So, I think This has been like a fascinating discussion. And now I want to go to Dale Fletter. And I wanted to make sure everybody understands Dale. Dale actually teaches programming right now.

Dale Fletter
Yes.

Dr. Jasmin Cowin
So, for him, you know, all of these things, you know, when we talk about ethics and multiplications, and amplifiers and artificial intelligence. Now, it all starts with building blocks. And one of the building blocks for all of these meta verses all of this language learning all of these natural language processing, it starts with programming. And we have discussed pre discussion, we had a meeting, and Dale spoke on outcomes for the labor market. He said, you shared with me that applicant’s assertion that they know something without demonstrated application is largely dismissed. And that employers put a great deal of faith in the diploma that universities grant. And so, your question was, how can the metaverse or any of its technological components, fundamentally change that? Did I get that right?

Dale Fletter
Yeah, yeah, if I may, I want to just bridge this by making an amplification on the ethics. One of the things that I have not yet heard, or acknowledged in many instances has been the fact that the metaverse model is an extension of the social networking model, which itself has an inherent economics based on advertising, that you don't pay to participate in social media, because you are paying them through access to your knowledge, your, I should say, attitudes, so they sell privacy, they are selling your privacy, or what you visit, what you share with your cookies, and all of that in order to compensate them for the cost of running that particular network. So particularly in the European sphere, I think this is going to be a very severe obstacle for their business model to actually create this metaverse. But to the main point, which is that I came to academia very late in life. So, I only did it after I had ended my commercial career, doing software development and implementation.

So, I have more. How shall I say that after postgraduate knowledge of what our students ended up going into later on, and what is key to their ultimately success is the first job that they take out of college. So that really is going to flavor their careers. And we all know that a college degree is very much a gateway to a better why better life. So, when I think of the question, how do we create an education system that serves more people? How do we remove barriers? Obviously, the economics are very important. But it goes beyond just mere economics in that, what is it that our employers want? They want very often, certain skills, and people are going to university in order to get those skills to have that diploma. And one of the key contributors of that diploma is their ability to get grades to pass tests. And that makes me comment on the fact that I don't think educators always realize that it's a two-step process. It's not only education, it is also the assessment and the certification that they have achieved certain competencies. And employers use that diploma as a surrogate for their implied success on the job.

Now, I have a quote here that I want to find. Warren Buffett, who you may have heard of recently, had said that in hiring, he looks for three things. He looks for integrity, intelligence, and energy. And when we look at our applicants, don't we often look for those same things. We depend upon certain standardized tests, which ultimately are measuring some amount of intelligence, raw intelligence, and the more intelligent they are, the more likely they will do well in the university environment. And we look for integrity in various markers that we find and certainly energy so we need we ended up taking them in, we give them an education, we certify that they have passed the gauntlet that they have navigated the obstacles we give them to be able to get that diploma, which goes to a certain amount of tenacity, grit, and dedication, and, of course, emotional maturity. Many students at an undergraduate level really don't have the emotional maturity yet, in order to do well.

So, the universities want to maintain that level of student outcome. And they depend upon maintaining the integrity, the value of the diplomas that they grant. So, we cannot improve the numbers that we push through university if that means degrading the quality of the diplomas that we're given, or else we're going to end up like killing the golden goose, that degree won't mean what it used to if we do that. So, there’s all there's all of that, that we have to consider when we're looking at an online modality when we're looking at the metaverse technology to extend and try to improve the equity and the access to everybody. There's also the fact that in the real world, after your first employments, your second third or fourth job, are very often less determined by your, by your diploma than they are by your prior experience, because employers want to find someone that's already doing the job that they want them to do. So, diploma becomes less important. And this goes to post graduate education.

And Moshe already pointed out that these online master's programs have done very well. And also, if you look at the trends, there's a lot more adult education now than there ever used to be more people come back to school, when they have lost a job and they want to improve their prospects later on. I'm not as convinced that employers always properly value that adult education as opposed to a degree program. And I think that might be because of their doubts about what they've actually learned and the skills that they've developed from that adult education. But they clearly can be a growth area for Metaverse education. The last thing that I'm very focused on when I look at Metaverse, and what it might do for education, is the fact that creating a high quality, Metaverse styled education is going to depend upon a significant amount of investment. Frankly, we haven't really done it yet. We don't know to what extent immersive technology, head mounted displays, and all of that really even matter at all. Clearly, when it comes to a social space, being able to improve the relationships between students or between students and faculty. That kind of remote technology is very important.

But the one thing that always makes my eyes roll is when I see these pictures, where it shows a bunch of avatars sitting in a classroom, and there's an instructor up at the front, just modeling what we do in the real world. And paving the cow path is not how we're going to properly leverage this new technology in order to go forward into the 21st century. We can't be looking back to old models we have to be looking to, to new models of education. So being and given that most universities depend upon public funding, there's going to be a certain amount of requirement that we find political will to fund these new modes, these new modalities of education, as well as trying to convince employers that these have value that they have improved the capabilities of the employees they want to interview and potentially hire.

Dr. Jasmin Cowin
Thank you very much. This was very insightful. Dale. You know, there's a lot to unpack. Unfortunately, we, you know, we don't have so much time anymore. So, who would like to speak Moshe perhaps and Amany.

Dr. Moshe Vardi
So, I think there is a great opportunity here for the metaverse and what is the opportunity? So, what we have learned about remote education especially Hidden behind the screen, the student’s engagement drops. Especially since we have because of ethical issue, we said no we can force you turn your screen on. So, the sooner behind the screen, the screen is off the muted, so beginners will not get in. And guess what? It's muting effect on engagement. They're also sitting in front of the distraction machine, if they have a laptop, we all know a laptop is a distraction machine. While you're sitting there on Zoom. Of course, you can do other things as well. And it's a seductive distraction machine.

So, the challenge for us is, and you know, they can be distracted in class people debate, for example, in my classroom, I've said finally, after years, I said, no devices, take notes by longhand, no devices, I want you to be here in the classroom not being distracted. And so, the question, is this the engagement problem? Can Virtual Reality do something about it? If technologies, people who do VR technology can demonstrate to me that they can raise engagement level, then they'll have my full support? My worry is that it will reduce the engagement level, which are the law when you do online education. But to me, there is an opportunity and a challenge to using for the metaverse is, are you going to increase? Yes, the teacher can do it can deliver education. But we are interested not in delivery, we are interested in the learning, will it improve learning? That to me is a challenge for the metaverse.

Dr. Moshe Vardi
you're muted, Amany is muted. Everybody is muted, except for me.

Dr. Jasmin Cowin
I could hear from Amany for four minutes. And then from the from Joaquin. And then I think we're going to have to close the session.

Dr. Amany Alkhayat
Yeah, I just love what Dale said about we don't need to replicate what we haven't removed. And in VR, we don't need to create a classroom because this is what we have, and so, what's the benefit of creating a classroom in VR? And also Dr. Moshe? Yeah, it's, there are lots of research that actually proves engagement in VR, and AR. And but the thing is, is that when we talk about engagement, we also talk about the teacher, the educator, as one of the important factors in making that engagement happen in the classroom. So, there are an engaged VR, for example, there's Oxford University, as a partner at Stanford University has been a partner for a long time and engage XR. And there are lots of simulations, especially for in medicine, language learning and other professions.


Like, for example, forensic digital forensics. So there has been some lessons on some activities, immersive activities, that actually walks nurses and doctors through understanding certain practices and medicine or nursing. And also, for example, looking at certain corpse or, or looking closely at hearts and stuff like that. Taking language learners into a cafe or into something that's really cultural, and they won't be able to be able to visualize it in a real classroom. So, and there's a really a great book by Professor Jeremy Bailenson and it's called “experience on demand”. And he said that we are may not be used in all cases, but there are very specific cases that can be used in virtual reality. So, there is research that proves that it's engaging, and it can be more engaging. You know, it depends on us as teachers and learners and how to make the classroom especially if we teach classes that are very diverse, we need to attend to students.

Dr. Jasmin Cowin
When you think about it, the idea that you can have a molecular workbench, or that you can go in a simulation lab for nanoscience, and nanotech, those are advantages. If you are in a smaller, let's say community-based organization. You're in a smaller university, maybe in the outskirts, you know, more rural, then you don't, you're not going to have the investment capability to invest 15 $20 million in a molecular lab, you just you don't you barely can keep going like this, but this is the skill set that your students are going to need. Well, the simulation spaces will give students access to specific IP assets, you know, molecular, workbench, biochemistry, all of these things, they will be accessible. You can take perhaps a course with an ancient Greek professor who is teaching from his home country. So, there are use cases. For me though, there is a question. So, let's say that there is a digital twinge professor, right? He's available 24/7. But ethically, do we as users, me as faculty and students as learners, shouldn't we ethically have the right to say I don't want to be taught by a twin or artificial intelligence. And I'm going to leave that to Dr. Alvarez to your key to answer once and for all.

Dr. Joaquin Alvarez
from my uploads, of course, is legitimate to say I just want to interact with human interaction. I mean, human meaningful control is basic in our society. And we have to find ways to have these human components through technology, I mean, technology, it's amazing. It's wonderful. It can provide so many things, also risk, but the human role should be there. I mean, it's the key point of the university system is this kind of human connection, It's making friends at the bar. It's just a complete part of our lives. So, we have to unsane and technology competency, but we should find equilibrium.

Dr. Jasmin Cowin
And this sort of brings us you know, full circle. So, you were here today listening to the WHERS 2022 conference panel on the future of higher education, and extended reality. The next new normal Metaverse, virtual beings, AI cloning, and we were all part of a transdisciplinary discussion with Dr. Joaquin Rodríguez Alvarez, where are you coming? Where are you currently?

Dr. Joaquin Alvarez
I'm in Barcelona. I'm from the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

Dr. Jasmin Cowin
Okay, so we have Barcelona. Dale Fletter, where are you coming from?

Dale Fletter
I'm sorry. I'm at. I live in Sacramento. I teach at University of California Davis, which is about 20 minutes from my home.

Dr. Jasmin Cowin
Then we had Amany Alkhayat and she is a doctoral student where Amany

Dr. Amany Alkhayat
Teachers College Columbia University in New York.

Dr. Jasmin Cowin
And what is your dissertation?

Dr. Amany Alkhayat
My dissertation is about conversational AI.

Dr. Jasmin Cowin
There we go. She's the future and then we have Dr. Moshe Vardi. Dr. Vardi Where are you coming in from?

Dr. Moshe Vardi
I'm from Houston, Texas. But now I have a confession to make. I'm actually a bot.

Dr. Jasmin Cowin
You are at Rice University in Houston, Texas. And I am Dr. Jasmin Bey Cowin and I am from Toro University in New York. And we wanted to also say thank you to the conference team. And I'm going to end this discussion today with the following observation. You know, while educators’ learners and administrators might have AI agents and or intelligent systems working besides them accelerating learning proctoring tests or perhaps helping with assessments, the opportunities to share experiences that convened learning communities for collaborative work, I still human based. And so, when we look forward, we need to think about how universities and learning institutions need to be ready to implement and prepare not only for the future, open rank concept, but also on how technologies such as meta verses will impact higher education and university rankings driven by data availability for future college students. And I say thank you very much for my panel. And I hope that you all have a wonderful time. Thank you for your time.