The pandemic, ever a reliable source of misery over the last two years, has provided little reason for excitement. This is until you see its catalysing effects on digitisation, as well as the broader thinking around how we consume and engage with entertainment, work and of course, education.

It’s set against the background of these shifting sands that Labster – a STEM-aligned digital learning platform, that’s offering a compelling alternative to traditional further education routes – brought Hope Frank on board as its new Chief Marketing Officer.

If the pandemic has shifted the expectations around education engagement, as well how we tackle the salient social issues that plague education equality, especially in STEM, then Frank thinks EdTech could hold the answers, as she discusses in this interview with DIGIT.

A pandemic-sharpened focus on educational shortfalls

The education landscape has witnessed a technological upheaval in the wake of the pandemic. The most urgent challenge doubtlessly being the need to quickly accommodate remote working and learning.

According to Frank, however, you can’t simply take an educational framework and seamlessly make it fit into the mechanics of remote learning.

“What didn’t work during the pandemic was rushing to port a traditional teaching approach into a virtual environment,” says Frank.

She adds: “As well as the new challenges brought on by the pandemic, educators are also continuing to deal with issues that preceded it, including teaching to classrooms of students with unique learning needs, trying to bridge the accumulated knowledge gaps from years of inconsistent schooling, and perennially tight budgets.”

Poverty and unequal access to high-quality, safe learning resources remains the fundamental challenge of our time. One of the most impressive parts about the tech revolution in the education sector is its capacity to become more accessible, practical, engaging, interactive, and relevant to a broader group of learners.

On this Frank says that “EdTech companies must continue to listen to educators who have a deep understanding of how students learn and what they need to flourish.

“Together we can help students bring their knowledge to bear in solving global challenges.”

The next frontier for EdTech

The metaverse is often maligned – widely considered underbaked and underwhelming with regards to compelling use-cases.

However, this has arguably not been the case with education, with the metaverse proving an intuitive fit – especially for an industry in need of instant solutions to deliver in the midst of the pandemic.

As a result, the “learning metaverse or eduverse,” as Frank calls it, is already being used by millions of students – such as those using virtual labs leveraged by the likes of Labster.

Beyond the metaverse’s position as a functional prospect for answering questions raised by the pandemic, the technology, according to Frank, also represents a broader shift in how education is disseminated.

Namely, through an active move away from the traditional mechanics of teaching to something that resonates more with the needs and expectations of today’s youth: Gamification.

On this, Frank says: “We see gamification as crucial to the future of technology in education. Gamification is fundamental to the metaverse, case in point: Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

“Today’s students are savvy; if they do a chemistry experiment in the metaverse, the experience must be less like a textbook with animations and much more like an actual experiment with real-life outcomes.

“The level of realism experienced in the gaming world can be translated into learning. In the metaverse, a science student who adds too much of a chemical to a flask should be able to see it overflow, or dramatically explode!”

When it’s constructed and engaged with appropriately, gamified learning can be a way for students to learn in a highly engaging, simulated environment

It’s a concept that Labster has had great success leveraging, with the platform aiming to develop educational simulations that model physical systems and have a realistic purpose and function

The Case for Labster

There is no doubt that Labster is going in heavy on virtual reality technology – last year they acquired the world’s first VR training platform for nurses by way of UbiSim.

The company has also run tests using its system to see its affect on test scores, with The Integrated Medical Sciences programme at University College London yielding very positive results on those that used Labster.

Within all this though, Frank is not making a case for VR-forward platforms like Labster to supersede traditional education.

“We’re now seeing the benefits of virtual learning, especially when combined with classroom teaching.

“What’s more, with the anticipation of the metaverse, we have an opportunity to marry immersive technology – in which students already choose to invest time – with high-quality learning content developed by educators.

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“The alignment of technology with learning opportunities will help us to overcome the issues that preceded and were heightened during the pandemic.”

The tech revolution in education has the capacity to make it more accessible, practical, engaging, interactive and relevant to a broader group of learners.

Words like gamification have gotten an unfairly bad rap. Ultimately though, there’s never been anything wrong with the concept, there just haven’t been enough examples of it done well.

When a pandemic forces critical tentpoles of society to completely upheave and replace well-ingrained frameworks, it seems reductive to not look to and utilise solutions that hold up best to the scrutiny of a new generation of students – i.e., the ones most in need of good, functional solutions.

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