Multicultural Education of South Korea through the VIRTUAL REALITY

Abstract

Purpose: The framework of online education is evolving from e-learning to XR-learning. As expectations for the educational effect and market growth of reality contents increase, the South Korean government has established related education policies and is making intensive investments. Generation C, Z, and Alpha learners, Digital Na-tives, are quickly responding and adapting to the concept of Metaverse. Thus, this study suggests the need for the transition of multicultural education in line with the changes in social, educational technology, and intends to present a rough direction of multicultural education. Method: This study used the approach of literature review and document analysis. The results of this study should be supplemented by quantitative and qualitative studies in the future. For a literature-oriented approach, refer to the government agencies' presentation materials and academic studies. Document survey is mainly relat-ed to cyber education materials presented on the Internet and various resources. Results: This study presented three ways of multicultural education using VR: First, 'Korean Culture Experience Program' offering experience of traditional Korean culture or historical facts; Second, 'Korean Life Adaptation Program' to settle down in Korean life including markets, banks, or community service centers; Third, 'education program for multicultural understanding and sensitivity' providing virtual cases of language barrier, social exclu-sion, and discrimination. In reality, there are still problems that require a lot of investment in content formulation, equipment purchase, maintenance, etc., and securing quality of content and finding suitable education methods. Conclusion: This study aims to present the direction of multicultural education in Korea using the virtual reality. Producing feasible contents needs expensive and very complicated procedures. This study proposes a basic con-cept how multicultural education in Korean society can be made in virtual space. These VR contents have the ad-vantage of being able to be an education suitable for the actual environment because they have the advantage of allowing learners to experience and discuss directly in virtual spaces. To this end, there remain challenges to overcome both ethical issues and budget problems of developing high-level contents.