Education unbound

Purpose - The rapid rise of Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) or Metaverses, presents opportunities and challenges for the societies in the physical world and a particular challenge for education. This work aims to identify the key issues confronting education as it moves from its cohort model, K-16, to an evolving life long experience, P-to-Gray, decoupling certification from knowledge acquisition. Design/methodology/approach - Experimentation with MUVEs in education are combined with a review of the critical literature to yield an analysis of the current situation. Findings - Education is evolving, and the MUVE's are also evolving both technically and culturally. Thus we will see significant changes in both current, brick space, education as well as e-learning. Practical implications - Education will be life-long learning, often ungraded, and blended between brick spaced learning and participation in virtual cultural experiences. Originality/value - Mirror worlds, or simulations, will be important, not just in the current "brick-space'', but also in the virtual worlds which will be accepted as one accepts "travel abroad''.