A Curriculum Package of Social and Ethical Concerns In Metaverse Ecosystem In School Education Based On Bloom's Taxonomy

Abstract

Facing the newly emerged blockchain technology in metaverse construction, the instructional design, pedagogy, and curriculum package of the metaverse ecosystem is underdeveloped or under-researched in education locally and globally. Proponents of metaverse education mostly focus on its application in the virtual world without thoroughly thinking about its connections between the physical world and virtual world. Metaverse construction not only provides lots of work-from-home business and studying opportunities during the considerable impacts of COVID-19 but also raises lots of social and ethical issues such as data privacy, virtual identity, investment/security risks, system integrity, social media toxicity, and corporate control problems. There is an urgent need to address such social and ethical concerns in some curriculum packages of metaverse education. Based on this perspective, this paper aims to develop a curriculum package of addressing some social and ethical concerns in daily-life applications of blockchain technology in upper secondary (K10-K11) education. Through the six levels of Bloom's taxonomy framework, course materials have been developed to provide the value-laden ecosystem concerning decentralized properties and the digitalization of IoT and STEM metaverses in some lessons. This paper also endeavors to help those participating K10-K11students raise their social and ethical awareness during the course development of a curriculum package related to metaverse literacy.

Full text

Iyer, S. et al. (Eds.) (2022). Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Computers in Education.
Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education
A Curriculum Package of Social and Ethical
Concerns In Metaverse Ecosystem In School
Education Based On Bloom’s Taxonomy
Percy Lai-Yin KWOK a*, Joe Kwong-Ngai CHEN b & Jordan Tsz-Chun FUNG c
aThe Education University of Hong Kong
b ICT-In-Physical Education Foundation Ltd.
c Jordan Fung & Company (Hong Kong) Ltd.
*lykwok@eduhk.hk
Abstract: Facing the newly emerged blockchain technology in metaverse construction, the instructional design,
pedagogy, and curriculum package of the metaverse ecosystem is underdeveloped or under-researched in
education locally and globally. Proponents of metaverse education mostly focus on its application in the virtual
world without thoroughly thinking about its connections between the physical world and virtual world. Metaverse
construction not only provides lots of work-from-home business and studying opportunities during the
considerable impacts of COVID-19 but also raises lots of social and ethical issues such as data privacy, virtual
identity, investment/security risks, system integrity, social media toxicity, and corporate control problems. There
is an urgent need to address such social and ethical concerns in some curriculum packages of metaverse education.
Based on this perspective, this paper aims to develop a curriculum package of addressing some social and ethical
concerns in daily-life applications of blockchain technology in upper secondary (K10-K11) education. Through
the six levels of Bloom’s taxonomy framework, course materials have been developed to provide the value-laden
ecosystem concerning decentralized properties and the digitalization of IoT and STEM metaverses in some
lessons. This paper also endeavors to help those participating K10-K11students raise their social and ethical
awareness during the course development of a curriculum package related to metaverse literacy.
Keywords: Metaverse literacy, social & ethical concerns, curriculum package, Bloom’s
Taxonomy
1. Introduction
Metaverse is a current and future integrated totality of the physical world and virtual world connecting
internet-of-things (IoT) and other aspects of human lives with a wide range of applications of (wired /
wireless) computer networks, handheld mobile devices, augmented reality / virtual reality /
substitutional reality / mixed reality / extended reality, artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. Currently,
metaverses provide a range of human imaginations and potential functionalities that enable new modes
of e-business, e-trades, e-digital currencies and e-learning, and lots of immersive social and virtual
experiences in STEM education and game-based learning (GBL). IoT and STEM metaverses refer to
focused uses of internet-of-things (IoT) and STEM applications respectively in daily lives connecting
the physical world and virtual world in metaverses.
The newly evolved Blockchain technology is a peer-to-peer decentralized, distributed ledger
that keeps digital assets transparent and unchangeable without the involvement of any third-party
intermediary. In particular, bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and one application of blockchain technology.
Notably, there are some system integrity, privacy threat, and (monetized) data insecurity problems
found in the uses of blockchain technology such as immoral and illegal withdrawal of e-cash or
e-currencies in bitcoins, causing the possible financial crisis in national, regional, and global economies
(Fromkin, 2022; Longstaff, 2019). Recently, an increasing number of ICT educators have paid heed to
ethical and legal concerns of blockchain technology such as privacy, security, environmental impacts,
loss of human jobs, and investment risks in metaverse education (Houlding, 2019). Students and
teachers ought to be cautious with those underlying ethical and legal issues, and some social inequity

problems like potential bad impacts of blockchain technology upon those elderly and disadvantaged
ICT-illiterate persons. Owing to the threats posed by the pandemic, metaverse construction not only
provides lots of work-from-home business and studying opportunities but also raises lots of social and
ethical issues such as virtual identity, data privacy, social media toxicity, and corporate control
problems (Djordjevic, 2022). There is an urgent need to address such social and ethical concerns in
metaverse education (Gurmen, 2022) and to develop suitable curriculum packages locally and globally.
2. Metaverse Ecosystem
In a balanced metaverse ecosystem, arts/sports/Green STEM activities in the physical world need to be
involved whilst game-based learning /AI & robotics / digitalized STEM activities in the virtual world
also need to take place through industry-market collaboration. Participating students and teachers in the
earlier stages of the project have enriched and connected their real-world and virtual-world learning
experiences through the IoT bridge. Mere one-sided physical or virtual world explorations might limit
their learning experiences without inter-world connections.
3. Research Project
Facing the newly emerged blockchain technology and metaverse construction, the instructional design,
pedagogy, and curriculum packages of the ecosystem of metaverses using blockchain technology have
been under-developed and under-researched in education locally and globally (c.f. Hirsh-Pasek, et
al. 2022). And the main reason for using the six-level Bloom’s Taxonomy in the project is to use a
widely accepted academic standard to evaluate the quality of the curriculum package and measure
participating students’ cognitive gain in the ecosystem of the mentioned metaverses. In this project, two
key features of metaverses related to KT are investigated in table 1. The main reason why a group of
upper secondary school students will be selected is that lower secondary and primary students cannot
master blockchain technology without any fundamental concepts of shareability and scalability of
databases and advanced programming techniques and tertiary students are not selected properly due to
their tight studying schedules and short school semesters, in comparison with upper secondary ones.
Table 1. Two key features of metaverses and socio-cognitive functions in student activities
Key Features
of Metaverses
Socio-cognitive Functions in Two-way
Knowledge Transfer (KT) model
Students’ exemplified activities in IoT
and STEM metaverses
Decentralized
Communal ownership enhances socialization
and externalization in KT
Students learn blockchain to understand the
importance of communal ownership for
e-trade transactions, tokens, e-marketing
prices & bitcoins
Digitalization
Monetization in digital currencies to build
value systems of buying goods and
consuming services in combination
(cognitive synthesis) in KT
In digital currency ecosystems using
blockchain technology, students use e-cash
coupons in AI shops to buy / sell products and
services in metaverses
The objectives of the current project are:
a. To develop and fine-tune an innovative curriculum package of the value-laden ecosystem
(concerning decentralized properties and digitalization) of IoT and STEM metaverses (using blockchain
applications) in education using Bloom’s Taxonomy framework
b. To help upper secondary students raise ethical awareness during daily life applications of Blockchain
technology using Bloom’s Taxonomy framework during the course development of curriculum package
in catering for their learning diversity in some studying classes
Notably, some value-laden parameters in the objective a like core humanistic values of
blockchain uses in metaverses, moral conscience of investors in bitcoins, and ethical and equity
concerns in metaverses ecosystem have been added to the curriculum package. Research
subjects are 60 upper secondary (K10-K11) students (in three classes of 20 students) in Hong
Kong and 6 employed teaching mentors are some undergraduate students in universities or
come from some NGOs (with undergraduate major in AI, educational technology, computer
engineering or computer science) during the two testing periods.

4. Curriculum Package
The curriculum package in normal classroom or after-school settings contains beginners / intermediate /
advanced learner levels of learning topics / studying themes related to social and ethical concerns of ten
lessons per class, based on Bloom’s Taxonomy; and some exemplars of individual course assignments
and group project involving coding design on some social and ethical concerns related to blockchain
applications in some IoT and STEM learning activities with continuous, summative and formative
assessment rubrics. Initial lesson contents (two lessons per topic) on blockchain technology in the
metaverse ecosystem include subject knowledge on blockchain technology and conditional knowledge
in the metaverse literacy framework and applied knowledge related to social and ethical concerns in the
following table 2.
Table 2. Types of Knowledge on Blockchain Technology in School Education
Subject (propositional)
knowledge
Conditional (meta-cognitive)
knowledge in metaverse literacy
framework
Applied (procedural) knowledge in
social and ethical concerns
1. Historical development
of different blockchains in
local and global contexts
Students know how to:
⚫ use, provide and communicate
information on blockchain
technology ethically and
responsibly
⚫ have effective and ethical uses of
information for their lifelong
learning (EDB, 2018)
Students are instructed to do group
presentation projects on raising their
moral awareness and categorizing
types of ethical issues (data privacy,
virtual identity, investment / security
risks, system integrity and social
media toxicity problems) towards
daily-life uses of blockchain
technology
2. Ethereum, EVM and
solidity coding
Students know how to:
⚫ use technology to improve use of
digital information
⚫ research effectively and responsibly
(The Ministry of Education and
Child Care, British Columbia,
2022)
Students are instructed to do literature
review in group projects on using
blockchain to address problems about
its social and ethical impacts on
information societies and endeavor to
find out feasible solutions or alleviate
those problems using their subject
(proposition) knowledge
3. Various applications of
EVM blockchain
4. NFT metadata structure
and storage
5. Future development,
Proof-of-work vs
Proof-of-stake
Three normal or after-school classes of mixed-ability groups of upper secondary students in
2022-23 have been instructed to do various learning tasks of the beginners / intermediate / advanced
levels in class activities and group projects works in the two testing periods. Students and mentors of the
first two classes will help refine the curriculum package with some studying topics / learning tasks using
the six levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy in their individual course assignments and group project works.
The third class in later stages will further help refine the topics / tasks of the revised version of the
curriculum package after interim evaluation. Table 3 provides a six-level of seeking explanations and
guided studying tasks and table 4 provides a three-level structure of learners in the instructional design
of the curriculum package on social and ethical concerns of blockchain technology.
Table 3. A Six-level Structure of Seeking Explanations and Guided Studying Tasks / Questions
Levels of BT
Seeking-explanations in instructional design of
the curriculum package
Guided students’ studying tasks /
thinking questions in curriculum
package
Remembering /
Recalling
Students is instructed to recall and recite the concept
of blockchain learned from relevant digital data
sources
‘What is blockchain’?
Understanding
Students can explain the relationships between the
two concepts in their own words
‘How are bitcoins related to
blockchain technology?’
Applying
Students can give particular examples of some
concepts in their daily encounter
‘How is blockchain used in
digitalization of metaverses? Please
give some examples.’
Analyzing
Students can analyze the whole organizational
structure of the codes / programs in terms of its
‘Please find out some / all logical
errors in the given codes / programs

individual components and finding their
interrelationships in given codes / programs
involving the decentralized properties
of metaverses.’
Extending/
Synthesizing
Students can extend the given codes to other
learning scenarios and put parts into a whole to work
out a flow chart / coding system
‘Please write a flowchart / a simple
coding system to perform some
decentralization features of database
using the given program codes.’
Creating /
Evaluating
Students can make value judgments by comparing
the advantages and disadvantages of both
‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ approaches in databases
in blockchain applications. Some even crease their
own blockchain coding system.
‘Given the two ‘bottom-up’ and
‘top-down’ approaches in databases,
which is the best suitable one for
blockchain applications? And why?’
‘Can you create a new blockchain
coding system?’
(modified from. Starr, Manaris, & Stalvey, 2008)
The whole curriculum package in daily-life applications of blockchain technology has a wide
range of learning topics / tasks at beginners / intermediate / advanced levels using Bloom’s Taxonomy
(BT) framework in the following table 4.
Table 4. A Three-level Structure of learners Using Bloom’s Taxonomy in the instructional design
Levels of learners
Production of knowledge in individual
assignments and group projects
Seeking-Explanations Aspects for
production of knowledge
Beginners
Recalling / remembering
Understanding
Intermediate
Applying
Analyzing
Advanced
Extending / Synthesizing
Creating / Evaluating
(modified from. Starr, Manaris, & Stalvey, 2008)
5. Potential Contributions of the Curriculum Package
Owing to its limited length, this paper merely highlights some social and ethical concerns in daily-life
applications of blockchain technology in a metaverse ecosystem connecting the physical and virtual
worlds. The curriculum package enriches local and global curricula in metaverse education, especially
curriculum development in the metaverse ecosystem on its digitalization and decentralized properties,
and adds more value-added parameters to social and ethical concerns in local and international
secondary curricula related to metaverse literacy.
References
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