Morehouse College to offer black history courses in the Metaverse

Professor Ovell Hamilton of Morehouse College will lead students through a groundbreaking course in Black history during the spring semester of 2023. All of the lectures and classwork will take place virtually. It is a virtual 3D space where students and teachers can use avatars to talk to each other and work together.
Students will be able to experience the harsh reality of African slaves stacked in chains on the deck of a slave ship by wearing virtual reality headsets in class. A slave will be standing at the ship’s edge, contemplating the agonizing decision between continued servitude and the release that comes with death. The students will witness this.
“The experience undoubtedly conjures up emotions of sadness,” shared Jerad Evan Young, a 41-year-old Black man studying film, television, and new media at Morehouse College.
Evan Young told NBC News that it definitely evokes emotions of sorrow.
He had the opportunity to virtually visit the Underground Railroad and a slave ship in Hamilton’s global history course.
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“There is also a sense of pride because not everyone made it through the slave trade.” You really had to be a strong individual. “So that let me know” is incorrect grammar. It should be “This lets me know.”
This lets me know that my ancestors were strong enough to last that grueling journey across the sea,” he said.
Hamilton was one of eleven professors who used virtual reality technology to teach students at Morehouse College’s first metaverse class last spring. He is creating the first in-depth Black history course utilizing the VR technology of VictoryXR.
The metaverse can be used by students to experience significant events in American history, such as Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C., in 1963 or the integration of Little Rock, Arkansas’s public high school, by nine African American students in 1957.
Additionally, they can tour a slave ship.
The new course “History of the African Diaspora Since 1800” is just one part of the Virtual Reality Project, which uses VR to educate students about Black history and cultivate a feeling of belonging.
“Journey for Civil Rights,” a Black history course taught by Hamilton this past spring through the independent VictoryXR organization, will serve as the general outline for the new course.
The Haitian Revolution will be the starting point, progressing through the development of the civil rights movement.
The Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the La Amistad slave ship, and the battlefields — where Black soldiers during the Civil War and World War I can be seen — will all be recreated using much of the same material.
Hamilton’s students gain a deeper understanding of the material and are more invested in its mastery when he uses the metaverse in a classroom.
“If they were sitting in a classroom or lecture,” Hamilton shared, “they would not have that experience.”
“You will have a new appreciation for how the events took place when you see the bottom of a slave ship and the slaves packed in together,” the professor continued.
Hamilton used 3D innovation tools to build environments like Dinosaur Island in order to teach his lessons in the metaverse.
Dinosaur Island is a virtual world where students can observe dinosaurs and a prehistoric landscape in order to see the true experience.
Hamilton showed his students the Middle Ages and the Colosseum in Rome.
Kade Davis, a freshman sociology major who is also enrolled in Professor Hamilton’s world history class, has found that the metaverse has increased his ability to interact with others and gain insight into the discussions in other courses.
“Thanks to the metaverse,” he said, “I’ve been able to travel to places like the Mayan pyramids in Mexico.”
Adding that the students were given a guided and detailed tour of the pyramid, Davis encouraged them to ask questions then and there.
“It was impressive to see that he could learn about the environment outside of a textbook and be able to articulate and immerse himself in it,” he expressed.
“The program was launched in the fall of 2020 in response to a growing number of students dropping out left and right following the institution’s shift to a fully online curriculum,” said Muhsinah Morris, director of the Virtual Reality Project and assistant professor of chemistry at Morehouse.
Morehouse and VictoryXR have joined forces to use virtual reality technology in the classroom, creating a “metaversity.”
” Morris said that in a traditional classroom setting, it’s not possible for everyone to be transported to the Great Wall of China or back in time or into some futuristic event.”
She said that you can do that in virtual reality.
Morehouse College offers 10 different metaverse courses spanning subjects such as journalism, English, biology, sociology, and more. 500+ students have participated in the program since it started, w/ over 170 enrolled in the current fall semester.
Students are given hands-on experience with game engines like Unity and Unreal Engine to create real-time 3D environments in addition to studying in the metaverse.
“The program’s ultimate goal is to overcome 20 generations of what could not be,” noted Morris.