A Student-Dominant View of the Readiness to use Metaverse in Education: The TRI-F Framework

Abstract: This paper reports on students' readiness for using Metaverse for education in a university in a developing country facing infrastructure and poverty challenges. Covid-19 forced many universities to adopt a hybrid approach to teaching and supervision. While online meeting technologies have become commonplace, there is a lack of the connectedness of face-to-face meetings, for which Metaverse is promoted as a solution. We pose the question as to the level of readiness of students to use Metaverse technologies. Thematic analysis of students' self-reflections on their experience of supervision in a 2D virtual world revealed the usefulness of the technology readiness index model, from which an extension to the model was proposed to include facilitators for the application of the technology that may mediate the motivators and inhibitors when assessing readiness to use Metaverse in education settings.