When it comes to traditional classroom learning, every day looks pretty much the same. You commute to your lectures, sit in a designated classroom, engage with your instructors and peers, and go home and study. This repetitive grind often leaves students yearning for a more dynamic and flexible educational experience.
Enter online learning.
When you study online, you have the freedom to craft your own schedule, escape the confining classroom setting, and explore diverse learning materials at your own pace.
Of course, this doesn’t mean your day shouldn’t be structured and well-organized. It just means that online learning firmly puts the reins of your education in your hands, allowing you to decide when, where, and how you engage with your coursework.
With this in mind, let’s explore what a day in the life of an Open Institute of Technology (OPIT) student might look like.
How an OPIT Student Spends an Average Day
Before diving into the specifics, let’s get to know the online “classroom” OPIT students spend most of their days at – Canvas LMS (Learning Management System).
Canvas LMS is the world’s No. 1 teaching and learning software, revolutionizing the educational experience for OPIT students. This robust LMS serves as a virtual hub for all academic activities, from live lectures to discussion boards.
Canvas LMS checks all the boxes for an enjoyable learning experience – it’s user-friendly, easy to navigate, interactive, and adaptable. Talk about a superior alternative to a traditional classroom!
Without further ado, let’s visit this platform and commence our day of immersive virtual classes, interactive discussions, and self-paced study sessions.
1. Log In to the Canvas LMS
The great thing about online education is that you can start your day whenever you’d like. Still, most OPIT students visit their Canvas account in the morning to check important updates, assignments, and announcements. Of course, this visit can also jog their memory about upcoming deadlines and live sessions.
But doesn’t the platform get confusing with all these different elements?
Absolutely not!
Here’s a quick breakdown of what OPIT students see once they log in.
First up – the dashboard. This centralized hub provides a neat overview of all the courses our students are enrolled in. So, for instance, if the student is pursuing a Master’s Degree (MSc) in Enterprise Security, they’ll see courses like “Cybersecurity Fundamentals and Governance,” “Data Analytics and Risk Management,” and “Cryptography and Secure Communications.”
On the right, next to the dashboard, students can see all their to-do activities, such as live lectures, study sessions, and student mixers. With this handy list, OPIT allows students to always stay on top of their game, as keeping a to-do list is a huge must in online learning.
If we were to go to the left, we’d see an easy-to-follow menu with tabs like “Courses,” “Inbox,” and “Help.” But these don’t come into play just yet. OPIT students typically first check their “Calendar” tab.
Though keeping tabs on all the activities in the calendar is essential for a productive day, our students typically prioritize two – live sessions and assessments (with their due dates).
When there’s a live session, the entire day is centered around it to ensure active participation.
Let’s make our fictional day one of these days to make it more interesting. As an example, suppose the lecture starts at 7 p.m., which OPIT students can find out by clicking on the live session in the calendar. There will also be a Zoom link to facilitate easy access when the time comes.
As far as the assessments go, students should always make sure there aren’t any with due dates close together. If there are, they know what to do – tackle them on time and avoid any last-minute stress.
2. Check the Course Content
At this point, our student knows exactly what their day will look like. Since the focus of that day will be on the live session, it’s time to get acquainted with the course content relevant to the upcoming lecture.
A quick click on the course in question, followed by the “Modules” tab, is all it takes to access this content.
The “Module” tab offers a neat overview of all the past and upcoming modules, broken down into theoretical and practical portions. With well-thought-out overviews, PowerPoint presentations, and tutorials, OPIT students can prep for the live session hassle-free.
3. Start Studying
Now that our students know what to expect from the live session, it’s time to get down to focused studying. Since the live session is in the evening, there’s plenty of time to go over the new module, revise the past one(s), and solidify their understanding.
To make the most out of their study time, OPIT students usually plan it in advance, especially when they intend to work on more than one module at a time. This helps them stay on track and avoid the ever-so-tempting procrastination.
As far as the studying itself goes, it’s all up to our students. They can tackle the material in short bursts or dedicate larger blocks of time to focus on the matter at hand. Whatever works for them!
4. Ask for Help
With online learning and self-paced studying, it’s perfectly normal to encounter challenging concepts and have numerous questions in the process. Moreover, these questions don’t necessarily have to do anything with the course material. Students might struggle to organize their time, balance priorities, or adapt to the online learning environment itself. Whatever the case, we’ve got great news – OPIT has an incredible support system in place.
That’s why our students will take some time after their study session to schedule a meeting with Sara Ciabattoni, OPIT’s Class Coordinator. During this 20-minute meeting, they will greatly benefit from Sarah’s expertise and guidance, allowing them to return to their studies with renewed confidence.
Like everything in Canvas LMS, scheduling this meeting takes only a few clicks. Visit the Class Coordinator Virtual Office, choose your preferred date and time, hit “Next,” and you’re good to go. Upon confirmation, Sarah will provide all the necessary conferencing details. Best of all? The meeting will automatically be added to the student’s Google calendar, so there’s no need to deal with these technicalities.
5. Take a Break Before Live Session
At this point, the day has already been filled with lots of helpful activities, productive studying, and valuable preparation. Do you know what this means? That’s right – a break is well-deserved!
During the break, OPIT students can do virtually whatever they want. After all, they’re home or in their chosen environment. Most of them use the break to relax, do something enjoyable, or grab a meal. Some will even use it to change the scenery a little before the live session.
The great news is that Canvas can come with them wherever they go. Canvas LMS offers a nifty app that allows students to check their calendars, see relevant activities, and read notifications on the go. This adds another layer of flexibility to this already incredibly convenient learning experience.
6. Attend the Live Session
Cue a ringing school bell – it’s time for the live session!
By this time, our students have already found the perfect environment to immerse themselves in the live session. Once the session begins, they can actively listen, take notes, or ask questions. OPIT’s amazing faculty is there to facilitate an engaging and interactive learning experience with lots of valuable insights and guidance.
7. Check the Grades
Thanks to the revitalizing break before the live session, our students won’t be too tired for some more work even after the session has concluded. But first – a quick check of the grades.
Unsurprisingly, grades can be accessed in two clicks by visiting the tab of the same name under “Courses”. One more click is all it takes to understand how these grades have been earned.
8. Work on Assessments
Let’s say our student enjoys studying in the evening and has a lot of energy left after the live lecture. In that case, it’s time to tackle some assignments.
Since OPIT continually assesses its students instead of hitting them with one huge final, keeping up with assignments is crucial.
These assignments often call for teamwork, which Canvas makes easy. A visit to the “Collaborations” tab under “Courses” and a click on the “Start a New Collaboration” button can be the beginning of an incredibly fruitful collaboration.
OPIT students typically use WhatsApp to communicate outside the “official” Canvas and Slack platforms, so a quick message is enough to get all the teammates together.
9. Talk to a Career Advisor
OPIT students nearing the end of their academic journey at our institution typically have important decisions to make regarding their career paths. That’s why it’s perfectly normal to feel slightly anxious or overwhelmed at the end of the day.
So, let’s schedule a valuable one-on-one consultation with the Head of Career Services at OPIT before signing off. The unbelievably experienced Mike McCulloch is at our student’s disposal for any career-related concerns, guidance, or support.
10. Revel in a Day Well-Spent
At the end of such a day, all our students can do is pat themselves on the back. Here at OPIT, we’d like to believe we also have a part in this sense of achievement, thanks to the unparalleled flexibility, clarity, and support we offer.
But what will your typical day as an OPIT student look like? Start your academic journey at this prestigious institution to find out.
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From the same author
Read the articleDuring the Open Institute of Technology’s (OPIT’s) 2025 Graduation Day, we conducted interviews with many recent graduates to understand why they chose OPIT, how they felt about the course, and what advice they might give to others considering studying at OPIT.
Karina is an experienced FinTech professional who is an experienced integration manager, ERP specialist, and business analyst. She was interested in learning AI applications to expand her career possibilities, and she chose OPIT’s MSc in Applied Data Science & AI.
In the interview, Karina discussed why she chose OPIT over other courses of study, the main challenges she faced when completing the course while working full-time, and the kind of support she received from OPIT and other students.
Why Study at OPIT?
Karina explained that she was interested in enhancing her AI skills to take advantage of a major emerging technology in the FinTech field. She said that she was looking for a course that was affordable and that she could manage alongside her current demanding job. Karina noted that she did not have the luxury to take time off to become a full-time student.
She was principally looking at courses in the United States and the United Kingdom. She found that comprehensive courses were expensive, costing upwards of $50,000, and did not always offer flexible study options. Meanwhile, flexible courses that she could complete while working offered excellent individual modules, but didn’t always add up to a coherent whole. This was something that set OPIT apart.
Karina admits that she was initially skeptical when she encountered OPIT because, at the time, it was still very new. OPIT only started offering courses in September 2023, so 2025 was the first cohort of graduates.
Nevertheless, Karina was interested in OPIT’s affordable study options and the flexibility of fully remote learning and part-time options. She said that when she looked into the course, she realized that it aligned very closely with what she was looking for.
In particular, Karina noted that she was always wary of further study because of the level of mathematics required in most computer science courses. She appreciated that OPIT’s course focused on understanding the underlying core principles and the potential applications, rather than the fine programming and mathematical details. This made the course more applicable to her professional life.
OPIT’s MSc in Applied Data Science & AI
The course Karina took was OPIT’s MSc in Applied Data Science & AI. It is a three- to four-term course (13 weeks), which can take between one and two years to complete, depending on the pace you choose and whether you choose the 90 or 120 ECTS option. As well as part-time, there are also regular and fast-track options.
The course is fully online and completed in English, with an accessible tuition fee of €2,250 per term, which is €6,750 for the 90 ECTS course and €9,000 for the 120 ECTS course. Payment plans are available as are scholarships, and discounts are available if you pay the full amount upfront.
It matches foundational tech modules with business application modules to build a strong foundation. It then ends with a term-long research project culminating in a thesis. Internships with industry partners are encouraged and facilitated by OPIT, or professionals can work on projects within their own companies.
Entry requirements include a bachelor’s degree or equivalency in any field, including non-tech fields, and English proficiency to a B2 level.
Faculty members include Pierluigi Casale, a former Data Science and AI Innovation Officer for the European Parliament and Principal Data Scientist at TomTom; Paco Awissi, former VP at PSL Group and an instructor at McGill University; and Marzi Bakhshandeh, a Senior Product Manager at ING.
Challenges and Support
Karina shared that her biggest challenge while studying at OPIT was time management and juggling the heavy learning schedule with her hectic job. She admitted that when balancing the two, there were times when her social life suffered, but it was doable. The key to her success was organization, time management, and the support of the rest of the cohort.
According to Karina, the cohort WhatsApp group was often a lifeline that helped keep her focused and optimistic during challenging times. Sharing challenges with others in the same boat and seeing the example of her peers often helped.
The OPIT Cohort
OPIT has a wide and varied cohort with over 300 students studying remotely from 78 countries around the world. Around 80% of OPIT’s students are already working professionals who are currently employed at top companies in a variety of industries. This includes global tech firms such as Accenture, Cisco, and Broadcom, FinTech companies like UBS, PwC, Deloitte, and the First Bank of Nigeria, and innovative startups and enterprises like Dynatrace, Leonardo, and the Pharo Foundation.
Study Methods
This cohort meets in OPIT’s online classrooms, powered by the Canvas Learning Management System (LMS). One of the world’s leading teaching and learning software, it acts as a virtual hub for all of OPIT’s academic activities, including live lectures and discussion boards. OPIT also uses the same portal to conduct continuous assessments and prepare students before final exams.
If you want to collaborate with other students, there is a collaboration tab where you can set up workrooms, and also an official Slack platform. Students tend to use WhatsApp for other informal communications.
If students need additional support, they can book an appointment with the course coordinator through Canvas to get advice on managing their workload and balancing their commitments. Students also get access to experienced career advisor Mike McCulloch, who can provide expert guidance.
A Supportive Environment
These services and resources create a supportive environment for OPIT students, which Karina says helped her throughout her course of study. Karina suggests organization and leaning into help from the community are the best ways to succeed when studying with OPIT.
Read the articleIn April 2025, Professor Francesco Derchi from the Open Institute of Technology (OPIT) and Chair of OPIT’s Digital Business programs entered the online classroom to talk about the current state of the Metaverse and what companies can do to engage with this technological shift. As an expert in digital marketing, he is well-placed to talk about how brands can leverage the Metaverse to further company goals.
Current State of the Metaverse
Francesco started by exploring what the Metaverse is and the rocky history of its development. Although many associate the term Metaverse with Mark Zuckerberg’s 2021 announcement of Meta’s pivot toward a virtual immersive experience co-created by users, the concept actually existed long before. In his 1992 novel Snow Crash, author Neal Stephenson described a very similar concept, with people using avatars to seamlessly step out of the real world and into a highly connected virtual world.
Zuckerberg’s announcement was not even the start of real Metaverse-like experiences. Released in 2003, Second Life is a virtual world in which multiple users come together and engage through avatars. Participation in Second Life peaked at about one million active users in 2007. Similarly, Minecraft, released in 2011, is a virtual world where users can explore and build, and it offers multiplayer options.
What set Zuckerberg’s vision apart from these earlier iterations is that he imagined a much broader virtual world, with almost limitless creation and interaction possibilities. However, this proved much more difficult in practice.
Both Meta and Microsoft started investing significantly in the Metaverse at around the same time, with Microsoft completing its acquisition of Activision Blizzard – a gaming company that creates virtual world games such as World of Warcraft – in 2023 and working with Epic Games to bring Fortnite to their Xbox cloud gaming platform.
But limited adoption of new Metaverse technology saw both Meta and Microsoft announce major layoffs and cutbacks on their Metaverse investments.
Open Garden Metaverse
One of the major issues for the big Metaverse vision is that it requires an open-garden Metaverse. Matthew Ball defined this kind of Metaverse in his 2022 book:
“A massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds that can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence, and with continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communication, and payments.”
This vision requires an open Metaverse, a virtual world beyond any single company’s walled garden that allows interaction across platforms. With the current technology and state of the market, this is believed to be at least 10 years away.
With that in mind, Zuckerberg and Meta have pivoted away from expanding their Metaverse towards delivering devices such as AI glasses with augmented reality capabilities and virtual reality headsets.
Nevertheless, the Metaverse is still expanding today, but within walled garden contexts. Francesco pointed to Pokémon Go and Roblox as examples of Metaverse-esque words with enormous engagement and popularity.
Brands Engaging with the Metaverse: Nike Case Study
What does that mean for brands? Should they ignore the Metaverse until it becomes a more realistic proposition, or should they be establishing their Meta presence now?
Francesco used Nike’s successful approach to Meta engagement to show how brands can leverage the Metaverse today.
He pointed out that this was a strategic move from Nike to protect their brand. As a cultural phenomenon, people will naturally bring their affinity with Nike into the virtual space with them. If Nike doesn’t constantly monitor that presence, they can lose control of it. Rather than see this as a threat, Nike identified it as an opportunity. As people engage more online, their virtual appearance can become even more important than their physical appearance. Therefore, there is a space for Nike to occupy in this virtual world as a cultural icon.
Nike chose an ad hoc approach, going to users where they are and providing experiences within popular existing platforms.
As more than 1.5 million people play Fortnite every day, Nike started there, first selling a variety of virtual shoes that users can buy to kit out their avatars.
Roblox similarly has around 380 million monthly active users, so Nike entered the space and created NIKELAND, a purpose-built virtual area that offers a unique brand experience in the virtual world. For example, during NBA All-Star Week, LeBron James visited NIKELAND, where he coached and engaged with players. During the FIFA World Cup, NIKELAND let users claim two free soccer jerseys to show support for their favorite teams. According to statistics published at the end of 2023, in less than two years, NIKELAND had more than 34.9 million visitors, with over 13.4 billion hours of engagement and $185 million in NFT (non-fungible tokens or unique digital assets) sales.
Final Thoughts
Francesco concluded by discussing that while Nike has been successful in the Metaverse, this is not necessarily a success that will be simple for smaller brands to replicate. Nike was successful in the virtual world because they are a cultural phenomenon, and the Metaverse is a combination of technology and culture.
Therefore, brands today must decide how to engage with the current state of the Metaverse and prepare for its potential future expansion. Because existing Metaverses are walled gardens, brands also need to decide which Metaverses warrant investment or whether it is worth creating their own dedicated platforms. This all comes down to an appetite for risk.
Facing these types of challenges comes down to understanding the business potential of new technologies and making decisions based on risk and opportunity. OPIT’s BSc in Digital Business and MSc in Digital Business and Innovation help develop these skills, with Francesco also serving as program chair.
-
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Related posts
During the Open Institute of Technology’s (OPIT’s) 2025 Graduation Day, we conducted interviews with many recent graduates to understand why they chose OPIT, how they felt about the course, and what advice they might give to others considering studying at OPIT.
Karina is an experienced FinTech professional who is an experienced integration manager, ERP specialist, and business analyst. She was interested in learning AI applications to expand her career possibilities, and she chose OPIT’s MSc in Applied Data Science & AI.
In the interview, Karina discussed why she chose OPIT over other courses of study, the main challenges she faced when completing the course while working full-time, and the kind of support she received from OPIT and other students.
Why Study at OPIT?
Karina explained that she was interested in enhancing her AI skills to take advantage of a major emerging technology in the FinTech field. She said that she was looking for a course that was affordable and that she could manage alongside her current demanding job. Karina noted that she did not have the luxury to take time off to become a full-time student.
She was principally looking at courses in the United States and the United Kingdom. She found that comprehensive courses were expensive, costing upwards of $50,000, and did not always offer flexible study options. Meanwhile, flexible courses that she could complete while working offered excellent individual modules, but didn’t always add up to a coherent whole. This was something that set OPIT apart.
Karina admits that she was initially skeptical when she encountered OPIT because, at the time, it was still very new. OPIT only started offering courses in September 2023, so 2025 was the first cohort of graduates.
Nevertheless, Karina was interested in OPIT’s affordable study options and the flexibility of fully remote learning and part-time options. She said that when she looked into the course, she realized that it aligned very closely with what she was looking for.
In particular, Karina noted that she was always wary of further study because of the level of mathematics required in most computer science courses. She appreciated that OPIT’s course focused on understanding the underlying core principles and the potential applications, rather than the fine programming and mathematical details. This made the course more applicable to her professional life.
OPIT’s MSc in Applied Data Science & AI
The course Karina took was OPIT’s MSc in Applied Data Science & AI. It is a three- to four-term course (13 weeks), which can take between one and two years to complete, depending on the pace you choose and whether you choose the 90 or 120 ECTS option. As well as part-time, there are also regular and fast-track options.
The course is fully online and completed in English, with an accessible tuition fee of €2,250 per term, which is €6,750 for the 90 ECTS course and €9,000 for the 120 ECTS course. Payment plans are available as are scholarships, and discounts are available if you pay the full amount upfront.
It matches foundational tech modules with business application modules to build a strong foundation. It then ends with a term-long research project culminating in a thesis. Internships with industry partners are encouraged and facilitated by OPIT, or professionals can work on projects within their own companies.
Entry requirements include a bachelor’s degree or equivalency in any field, including non-tech fields, and English proficiency to a B2 level.
Faculty members include Pierluigi Casale, a former Data Science and AI Innovation Officer for the European Parliament and Principal Data Scientist at TomTom; Paco Awissi, former VP at PSL Group and an instructor at McGill University; and Marzi Bakhshandeh, a Senior Product Manager at ING.
Challenges and Support
Karina shared that her biggest challenge while studying at OPIT was time management and juggling the heavy learning schedule with her hectic job. She admitted that when balancing the two, there were times when her social life suffered, but it was doable. The key to her success was organization, time management, and the support of the rest of the cohort.
According to Karina, the cohort WhatsApp group was often a lifeline that helped keep her focused and optimistic during challenging times. Sharing challenges with others in the same boat and seeing the example of her peers often helped.
The OPIT Cohort
OPIT has a wide and varied cohort with over 300 students studying remotely from 78 countries around the world. Around 80% of OPIT’s students are already working professionals who are currently employed at top companies in a variety of industries. This includes global tech firms such as Accenture, Cisco, and Broadcom, FinTech companies like UBS, PwC, Deloitte, and the First Bank of Nigeria, and innovative startups and enterprises like Dynatrace, Leonardo, and the Pharo Foundation.
Study Methods
This cohort meets in OPIT’s online classrooms, powered by the Canvas Learning Management System (LMS). One of the world’s leading teaching and learning software, it acts as a virtual hub for all of OPIT’s academic activities, including live lectures and discussion boards. OPIT also uses the same portal to conduct continuous assessments and prepare students before final exams.
If you want to collaborate with other students, there is a collaboration tab where you can set up workrooms, and also an official Slack platform. Students tend to use WhatsApp for other informal communications.
If students need additional support, they can book an appointment with the course coordinator through Canvas to get advice on managing their workload and balancing their commitments. Students also get access to experienced career advisor Mike McCulloch, who can provide expert guidance.
A Supportive Environment
These services and resources create a supportive environment for OPIT students, which Karina says helped her throughout her course of study. Karina suggests organization and leaning into help from the community are the best ways to succeed when studying with OPIT.
In April 2025, Professor Francesco Derchi from the Open Institute of Technology (OPIT) and Chair of OPIT’s Digital Business programs entered the online classroom to talk about the current state of the Metaverse and what companies can do to engage with this technological shift. As an expert in digital marketing, he is well-placed to talk about how brands can leverage the Metaverse to further company goals.
Current State of the Metaverse
Francesco started by exploring what the Metaverse is and the rocky history of its development. Although many associate the term Metaverse with Mark Zuckerberg’s 2021 announcement of Meta’s pivot toward a virtual immersive experience co-created by users, the concept actually existed long before. In his 1992 novel Snow Crash, author Neal Stephenson described a very similar concept, with people using avatars to seamlessly step out of the real world and into a highly connected virtual world.
Zuckerberg’s announcement was not even the start of real Metaverse-like experiences. Released in 2003, Second Life is a virtual world in which multiple users come together and engage through avatars. Participation in Second Life peaked at about one million active users in 2007. Similarly, Minecraft, released in 2011, is a virtual world where users can explore and build, and it offers multiplayer options.
What set Zuckerberg’s vision apart from these earlier iterations is that he imagined a much broader virtual world, with almost limitless creation and interaction possibilities. However, this proved much more difficult in practice.
Both Meta and Microsoft started investing significantly in the Metaverse at around the same time, with Microsoft completing its acquisition of Activision Blizzard – a gaming company that creates virtual world games such as World of Warcraft – in 2023 and working with Epic Games to bring Fortnite to their Xbox cloud gaming platform.
But limited adoption of new Metaverse technology saw both Meta and Microsoft announce major layoffs and cutbacks on their Metaverse investments.
Open Garden Metaverse
One of the major issues for the big Metaverse vision is that it requires an open-garden Metaverse. Matthew Ball defined this kind of Metaverse in his 2022 book:
“A massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds that can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence, and with continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communication, and payments.”
This vision requires an open Metaverse, a virtual world beyond any single company’s walled garden that allows interaction across platforms. With the current technology and state of the market, this is believed to be at least 10 years away.
With that in mind, Zuckerberg and Meta have pivoted away from expanding their Metaverse towards delivering devices such as AI glasses with augmented reality capabilities and virtual reality headsets.
Nevertheless, the Metaverse is still expanding today, but within walled garden contexts. Francesco pointed to Pokémon Go and Roblox as examples of Metaverse-esque words with enormous engagement and popularity.
Brands Engaging with the Metaverse: Nike Case Study
What does that mean for brands? Should they ignore the Metaverse until it becomes a more realistic proposition, or should they be establishing their Meta presence now?
Francesco used Nike’s successful approach to Meta engagement to show how brands can leverage the Metaverse today.
He pointed out that this was a strategic move from Nike to protect their brand. As a cultural phenomenon, people will naturally bring their affinity with Nike into the virtual space with them. If Nike doesn’t constantly monitor that presence, they can lose control of it. Rather than see this as a threat, Nike identified it as an opportunity. As people engage more online, their virtual appearance can become even more important than their physical appearance. Therefore, there is a space for Nike to occupy in this virtual world as a cultural icon.
Nike chose an ad hoc approach, going to users where they are and providing experiences within popular existing platforms.
As more than 1.5 million people play Fortnite every day, Nike started there, first selling a variety of virtual shoes that users can buy to kit out their avatars.
Roblox similarly has around 380 million monthly active users, so Nike entered the space and created NIKELAND, a purpose-built virtual area that offers a unique brand experience in the virtual world. For example, during NBA All-Star Week, LeBron James visited NIKELAND, where he coached and engaged with players. During the FIFA World Cup, NIKELAND let users claim two free soccer jerseys to show support for their favorite teams. According to statistics published at the end of 2023, in less than two years, NIKELAND had more than 34.9 million visitors, with over 13.4 billion hours of engagement and $185 million in NFT (non-fungible tokens or unique digital assets) sales.
Final Thoughts
Francesco concluded by discussing that while Nike has been successful in the Metaverse, this is not necessarily a success that will be simple for smaller brands to replicate. Nike was successful in the virtual world because they are a cultural phenomenon, and the Metaverse is a combination of technology and culture.
Therefore, brands today must decide how to engage with the current state of the Metaverse and prepare for its potential future expansion. Because existing Metaverses are walled gardens, brands also need to decide which Metaverses warrant investment or whether it is worth creating their own dedicated platforms. This all comes down to an appetite for risk.
Facing these types of challenges comes down to understanding the business potential of new technologies and making decisions based on risk and opportunity. OPIT’s BSc in Digital Business and MSc in Digital Business and Innovation help develop these skills, with Francesco also serving as program chair.
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