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SEOUL -- Targeting young students familiar with virtual online activities, an engineering college will be created in the metaverse world in Goyang, a northwestern satellite city of Seoul. The virtual college called "Kaiser University" would offer hands-on training courses related to information technology, renewable energy, and medical science.
Metaverse, which enables users to interact with others using avatars through virtually created online spaces, is gaining momentum among South Korean universities as the online world does not physically limit the access of students. Jeonghwa Arts College, located in central Seoul, unveiled its scheme in February 2023 to create a metaverse campus where students can participate in virtual training courses. Cheongju University, about 112 kilometers (96 miles) south of Seoul, partnered with mobile carrier LG Uplus in November 2022 to build a virtual campus where students can take classes and receive career-related advice.
Goyang said in a statement on April 6 that the city partnered with Kaiser University's founding committee to open the metaverse institution in 2026. Kaiser University will collaborate with related companies to provide firsthand training courses in the virtual space or in the offline world. The school will consist of about 300 students and 40 professors. Metaverse won't be adopted for mandatory courses, which will be offered in the form of regular online lecture.
Soonchunhyang University held South Korea's first non-face-to-face entrance ceremony amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, allowing freshmen to meet professors and colleagues using avatars. Welcome packages including VR headsets, quarantine kits, and USBs were handed out in advance.
Some companies have adopted the metaverse to train young employees who like to express their unique identities through personalized characters. "I think metaverse makes young people feel they are somehow connected to each other in online spaces," Joh Hea-jung, a communication official at CJ Cheiljedang, a subsidiary of South Korea's food and entertainment conglomerate CJ Group, told Aju Korea Daily.
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