Meta is Bringing its AR-Focused Immersive Learning Academy to Australia

The company formerly known as Facebook has partnered with Code Like a Girl and T&DA (which stands for Technology and Design Agency), to launch something it calls the ‘Meta Immersive Learning Academy’, in Australia. The Meta Immersive Learning Academy, unsurprisingly, focuses on augmented reality, something the company’s CEO is obsessed with, love it or hate it. It’s a free, self-guided Meta Spark training module that will be available for those who “prefer to learn at their own pace”. Through this partnership with Code Like a Girl and T&DA, Meta will provide free, guided training in AR to over 200 women and gender diverse people. Meta reckons it will give them the confidence, tools and support needed to enter the world of immersive technologies and explore careers in AR and VR. While we love the free training element, we’re not sold on the product: the metaverse. “The Immersive Learning Academy is a global initiative to support the next generation of creators for the metaverse,” Meta explains. “The Academy will help grow Australia’s creator ecosystem by providing upskilling, community building, mentoring and monetisation opportunities.” Regardless, many skills are transferable from this metaverse space to other parts of the tech industry. The Code Like a Girl and T&DA course will launch in May and includes free support for women in the Code Like A Girl community to upskill in AR. It’ll include an eight-week coaching period, information sessions and community-building events, and the opportunity to apply for formal Meta Spark certification upon completion of the course. Participants who complete the course will be able to develop face filters, target tracker and world effects, Meta added. Given the self-guided online curriculum is now available to all Australians, for free, it would be silly to look a gift horse in the mouth if you were keen on dipping your toes in and seeing what all the fuss is about. The course is open to beginners who have never heard of Meta Spark before or technical creators that have already published a few effects.

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