In the spring of 2021, in Morehouse College's organic chemistry class, Dr. Muhsinah Morris conducted a little science experiment.

She has worked in higher vocational education for more than two decades, but the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed teachers to find new and upgraded ways to incorporate new technology into the classroom. So during the spring semester, she chose to try some of the newest foods to introduce glamour to her class after a year of trials. She teaches her course in the metaverse.

For a course that requires a lot of "visual-spatial intelligence," Morris says the experiment was a success. "We were able to take surface, two-dimensional shapes and put them into a three-dimensional space, and then students could dissect them in a way that they hadn't done before," Morris said in a recent interview.

Morris probably didn't know it at the time, but her class was quickly becoming a test case for what could very well be the next big thing in education. At the very least, Meta hopes like that. 

In November, months after Morris and others released Morehouse in the Metaverse, Meta announced that it would spend $150 million on its Meta-Immersive Learning program, It has partnered with VictoryXR, an Iowa-based virtual reality company, to create 10 "metaversities." Such digital campus platforms are owned by real universities, and Morehouse's experiment is the largest in the United States. In the last school year, nine CLASSES WERE brought to about 400 students in the Metaverse. Such courses range from journalism to molecular biology, from English to history and time. Next fall, the Metaverse will expand to 15 courses.

It's not just an odd second career for Meta, which also makes Meta Quest helmets for use in Metaverse classrooms. With its share price plummeting and its AD service teetering, Meta is betting its future on more people wanting to spend time in the Metaverse. "I want to live in a world where big companies use their online resources to do something big," he says. "I think there's an obligation to do it," Mark Zuckerberg told the news media in May.

Last October, Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company would spend more than $10 billion on actual LABS to lead the development and design of AR, VR, and other metaverse related services and programs. It is understood that the elite team behind the promotion consists of about 10,000 people. The company is already developing eyeglasses with built-in personal assistants that promise to serve as a kind of reserved human brain for wearers. The company has also launched "Project Cambria," which aims to bring the physical and fictional worlds together as an alternative to the laptop at work.

With a lot of investment in mobile games and workplace technology, the $77 billion global market for higher vocational education sales still has a lot to play for. If anyone has mastered the value of rolling out new technology on college campuses, it's Mark Zuckerberg.

Leticia Jauregui, world leader of Meta Immersive Learning, says in a statement, "A lot of my students who finish their courses say, 'Wow, if I had this in my first year, I would have been a stronger scientist, I would have been a stronger student. Apart from the exciting possibilities of business services and leisure, learning and training is a strong test case for the metaverse. The meta universe has tremendous potential socioeconomic benefits -- particularly in terms of cultural education and wellness -- from assisting medical students in training surgical techniques to bringing school curricula to everyday life in exciting ways."

At least for Morris, who heads Morehouse in the Metaverse, the program has been a success, leading to significant increases in final test scores and attendance. "Many of my own students come away saying, 'If I have had this in my first year, I would have been a stronger scientist also as a stronger student,'" she says.

Morehouse's success has inspired other universities, including the University of Maryland's Worldwide Teaching Area, to conduct their own educational experiments. The University of Maryland's worldwide campuses have been providing modern distance education to soldiers and adults in the United States and abroad for years. Unlike many other universities, it had more time to grow critical online education, so it was more prepared in advance when COVID-19 hit.