- Meta, along with Simplon, will launch Metaverse Academy for students of the academic year 2022-23.
- The project aims to train 100 students in its first year.
- The pedagogy focuses on increasing the employability of students for future job opportunities related to the metaverse.
Meta, formerly known as Facebook (NASDAQ:META), partners with Simplon.co, a French social and solidarity company dedicated to digital training, to launch ‘Metaverse Academy’, a free school exclusively for metaverse, in France for the forthcoming academic year.
Meta is launching a ‘metaverse academy’ in France, and aims to train around 100 students in two roles in its first yearhttps://t.co/uF4arWUcwb pic.twitter.com/WQBiW7m6Nr— Gadgets 360 (@Gadgets360) June 13, 2022
The two organizations announced the launch of this project in a joint press release issued on Sunday. The Metaverse Academy plans to train around 100 students in its first year from cities including Nice, Lyon, Marseille, and Paris, along with others. The training will mainly be for two roles — Specialist Immersive Technology Developers and Assistance and Support Technicians.
Laurent Solly, Meta’s vice president from Southern Europe, assured that the future of schooling will be “free, territorial, innovative and focused on employability.” He further added:
Thanks to this strong partnership with a key player, Simplon, the Metaverse Academy is a first step that will help anticipate the acceleration of uses and train the future builders of the metaverse. We want to participate in the creation of a collective metaverse, by creating sustainable jobs for the entire digital ecosystem.
The co-founder of Simplon, Frederic Bardeau, stated that the pedagogy will be face-to-face and projects will focus on 3D and immersive virtual world interactions. The project will particularly focus on diversity, with Solly’s goal to have 30% of the first cohort as women, and Bardeau’s approach encourages positive discrimination by not looking at job applicants’ CVs.
Both Meta and Simplon highlighted the need for such training programs in this era since 80% of the jobs that will exist in 2030 have not yet been invented. They also emphasized how the upcoming generation needs to be aware and employable for the future workforce.
However, Meta and Simplon are not the first to embark on a project to train trades related to the metaverse. Earlier this year, a Metaverse College was launched by Ridouan Abagri in France, which is the first school dedicated to the creation, structuring, and development of 3D universes via augmented and virtual reality.
Meanwhile, Meta is embracing the metaverse with every passing day. Last week it announced integrating a feature for users to socialize in the metaverse, titled Horizon Worlds, through an update to its VR headset, Oculus Quest 2.
Furthermore, Meta plans to enable a smart screen device that will be an enterprise-exclusive product, named Portal. Project Nazare is another ongoing development in the Zuckerberg-owned company.