In our first episode we’re excited to have as guest virtual reality expert Craig Frehlich.
How is the field of Education affected by advances in VR technology, and how can educators benefit from incorporating VR in and outside of the classrooms? And what are the challenges that teachers and students need to consider before diving head first into virtual experiences?
The interview was conducted by Ilia Gugenishvili and the episode was edited by Tobias Andtfolk.
Welcome to the DUTAR WP3 workshop sessions! During the workshop session, you will have the opportunity to familiarize yourself with XR and various VR applications that we have prepared for you. During the workshop, you will also have the opportunity to discuss XR with the work group and other members of the reference group.
Register to one of the following dates:
Registration: https://forms.office.com/e/z3Wpy7NK6r
The workshop sessions in Turku will be organized in the XR lab, located in the basement of the C-staircase of the ASA building.
Preliminary agenda:
During the group discussions and after the session, there are also possibilities to try out other VR applications we have prepared.
See you at the workshop!
Work group for DUTAR Work Package 3
During the workshop session, you will have the opportunity to familiarize yourself with XR and various VR applications that we have prepared for you. During the workshop, you will also have the opportunity to discuss XR with the working group and other members of the reference group.
The workshop sessions are organized on:
Registration on or before March 6th: https://forms.office.com/e/kyTq0L5FE7
The workshop sessions in Vaasa are organized in the Foajén and C215
Preliminary programme:
During the group discussions and after the session, there is also the chance to try out other VR applications we have prepared.
See you at the workshop!
Work group for DUTAR Work Package 3
Author: Ilia Gugenishvili
Åbo Akademi University’s VR Integration
Virtual Reality (VR) has ushered in a transformative era in education, particularly in disciplines such as engineering and computer science, yet its potential remains largely unexplored in other fields, such as business and education. This untapped potential is evident in the challenges posed by VR: its expansiveness, perceived difficulty of use, and the time-consuming nature of its creation and implementation for different purposes. Regardless of these challenges, Åbo Akademi University (ÅAU), supported by the project Digitalization of education for accessibility, attractiveness, and relevance (Swe. Digitalisering av undervisningen för tillgänglighet, attraktion och relevans; DUTAR), has embraced VR, incorporating it into various courses.
One such example is the course ‘Introduction to Marketing’. The course is offered to international bachelor’s and master’s degree students and one of its objectives is to develop competent communicators. To reach this objective, VR is used as a tool. Next, I will detail the role of VR in the course, how implementation was designed, and which experiences VR introduced for the course participants.
Four Stages of the Course
The VR workshops, conducted at ÅAU’s XR lab in the ASA-building, utilized the Virtual Speech application with Meta Quest 3 headsets. This AI-powered software supports different courses and exercises, providing feedback to improve soft skills such as participating in interviews, networking, expressing empathy, and delivering impactful presentations.
Soft skills, often referred to as interpersonal skills or emotional intelligence, play a vital role in enhancing interactions, job performance, and career prospects. Unlike technical or hard skills, soft skills are transferable across different roles and industries. They are especially crucial in marketing, where effective communication and persuasion are paramount for success.
The approach taken in the VR workshops for the course participants involved four key stages:
The course began with students forming groups, brainstorming startup ideas, and developing marketing plans throughout subsequent seminars.
Toward the end of the course, students prepared face-to-face presentations for their startup ideas, planned to be delivered at the final seminar.
Before the final presentations, students underwent individual VR-based training to refine their presentation skills.
The students presented their ideas in the final seminar, at which industry and academic experts were present to provide constructive feedback on both the ideas and presentation.
Student Training in VR: A Hands-On Experience
Students pre-registered for the training and submitted their slides to the course teacher. Each student received a 45-minute time slot, with the flexibility to use as much time as needed. In the lab, the course teacher acquainted them with the hardware and software, emphasizing that VR technology is a supportive learning tool, encouraging an active experience rather than passive information absorption. These introductions were crucial since most students had limited or no prior experience with VR. Students were instructed to:
Present: Deliver presentations in front of a virtual audience, utilizing pre-uploaded slides and notes. The software simulates audience reactions, including positive feedback through nodding and smiling. Distractions, such as virtual phone calls or audience interactions, could also be activated.
Read Feedback: After presenting, the software calculated students’ scores, providing feedback on various aspects such as duration, eye contact, vocabulary, speaking pace, volume, and overall listenability. Students were encouraged to read the feedback and reflect on how to address or improve these aspects.
Answer AI-Generated Questions: Following the feedback, students activated AI-generated questions relevant to their presentations.
Once students became familiar with the technology and expressed confidence in its use, the teacher left the room to afford them privacy for their training.
Post-Training Insights
Post-training teacher conducted interviews to learn about students´ experiences. When questioned about their motivations, three primary reasons surfaced among the participants in the VR sessions: (a) to overcome anxiety; (b) to gain practical experience presenting in front of a large audience; and (c) curiosity about VR training.
Students` collective evaluation of these seminars was overwhelmingly positive, describing the experience as enjoyable, engaging, realistic, and novel. Some participants noted that VR provided a safe space without stakes or judgments, reducing self-consciousness. They also emphasized that VR was free of distractions, enabling them to concentrate fully on their training without the temptation of checking social media on their phones. The AI-generated questions proved accurate and relevant, with some questions later asked by a live audience during their final face-to-face presentations. Students expressed the belief that additional individual sessions, and possibly group sessions, could enhance these trainings. Overall, they found the experience valuable and expressed a desire for more courses to incorporate VR technology.
As VR continues to prove its worth in education, incorporating it into more courses can empower students with essential soft skills, preparing them for success in academia and their future careers.
Authored by Dr. Ilia Gugenishvili, a Lecturer at Åbo Akademi University and the course instructor for Introduction to Marketing
The purpose of this work package is to initiate the development and implementation of methods for using virtual reality technology in education. As a natural part of the implementation, further development of the already established XR-lab spaces will also be carried out, with the aim of providing teachers and students with a useful interactive learning environment to operate in.
Work Package Goals:
XR stands for ”Extended Reality” and is a comprehensive term used to describe technologies that combine the physical world with the digital world. XR includes virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR). Virtual reality technologies create a unified experience by interacting between digital and real elements.
Here is a brief description of what Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR) really are:
The XR-Lab is a physical space where teachers and students can familiarize themselves with XR technologies and various virtual environments. The XR-Lab is intended to serve as a natural space for the following purposes:
In summary, the XR-Lab should be a bookable space where staff and students can familiarize themselves with XR technologies and collaborate, experiment, and develop innovative solutions. At the same time, support and resource packages are also planned to support the use of virtual reality technologies and environments.
Extended Reality is still a relatively new didactic approach in education. XR creates a more engaging and interactive learning environment by allowing students to experience and explore subjects in a more concrete and safe way.
With XR, students can not only experience and practice challenging situations and participate in realistic simulations of real-world scenarios, but these technologies can also play a significant role in promoting sustainability within education. By integrating XR-technology into teaching, we can reduce the need for physical resources, thereby contributing to a more environmentally friendly learning environment.
Creating virtual simulations and interactive representations for subjects such as sustainable development and environmental science allows students to gain a deeper understanding of complex sustainability concepts. These technologies also enable global collaboration and knowledge sharing without the need for extensive travel, reducing the overall environmental impact of educational activities.
In this way, XR can become not only powerful tools for learning and understanding of various subjects but also a resource-efficient and sustainable method to foster environmental awareness and sustainability within the education system. These technologies also enable global and virtual collaboration, where individuals from different locations can meet in virtual spaces to discuss and solve problems together, as well as access virtual learning materials regardless of physical location.
XR is intended to serve as a complement in education, rather than a replacement; the technology should function as a tool to enhance and enrich traditional teaching methods.
Do you want to participate in the reference group for WP3, or receive more information about XR?
Contact Tobias Andtfolk, IT Project Manager, tobias.andtfolk@abo.fi
The meeting will be held on Monday December 4th 2023 at 11:00-12 on Zoom, https://aboakademi.zoom.us/j/65873004294.
The meeting will be held in English.
Work package 3 is about enabling teaching in virtual environments with a special focus on virtual and mixed reality (VR, AR, MR).
We have made two short introductory videos that we would like you to watch before the meeting (the videos will be published in week 47):
Agenda:
1. About the project: General, status, next steps
2. Inspirational lecture by Eva Mårell-Olsson: Immersive learning processes – pedagogical perspectives on the use of XR (30 min).
3. Roles of the stakeholders (working group and reference group)
Best regards,
Tobias Andtfolk, IT-project Manager on behalf of the DUTAR WP3 Project group
Recently a few of us sat down and discussed various ways we could communicate things on and around the DUTAR project.
So we have a couple of ideas in the pipeline:
We’ll put up a posters on campus, probably focusing on places where people tend to gather and wait (also known as queueing for lunch), inviting the onlooker to share thoughts and ideas on the future of education.
This ties in neatly with the workshops already being conducated by Work Package 1. Please see this earlier post for a full run down on the various Work Packages.
We’re not out to invent the wheel here, but rather to see if there’s a type of wheel that can fit the ÅAU wagon (or racing car, if you prefer). There are teachers and researchers already out there, at other HEIs, that are willing to share their thoughts and experiences with us. We could talk with them, and at the same time record a series of podcasts, letting all of you in on the conversation.
While we could talk for hours on end about DUTAR, we also know that people are in a hurry. Someone said that the magic number for movies on social media is 27 seconds. That’s a bit of a high bar, so we’ll try to keep ourselves to 10–15 minutes.
Movies we’re thinking of doing are on what user stories we’ve allready collected, on the chemistry course that’s currently using VR to train students in proper lab techniques, the Digivision pilot currently happening, involving teachers at FNT, and a presentation on the VR platform Glue, currently being used internally to showcase various VR environment and possibilities.
The DUTAR project will be presented in different shapes and forms to various shareholders along the way. We want to tailor our message for our audience. What would you like to know about DUTAR? And how? While we cannot promise a song & dance number, most other avenues of communication are open. Let us know via dutar@abo.fi.
Welcome to DUTAR project blog!
DUTAR stands for Digitalisation of education for accessibility, attractiveness and relevance. DUTAR consists of 5 work packages (WP), which all are lead as separate projects, following Åbo Akademi’s official project model. Each WP has its own project owner, project manager and project group. The work is financed by strategic funding from Ministry of Education and Culture.
The DUTAR project creates and further develops a technical and operational comprehensive platform that offers solutions for different forms of learning to support students’ learning , as well as provides educational planners and teachers with appropriate tools and support to effectively create and deliver digital or hybrid courses and educational packages to different target groups.
Work Package 1: Development of pervasive use cases
This work package produces and collects the requirements and specifications the other work packages need in the concrete implementation of tools, premises and support services. The planned deliverables for this WP are
Work Package 2: Platform for the production of digital teaching materials
This work package builds the physical studio premises, provides them with suitable hardware and software equipment, as well as support services. The planned deliverables for this WP are
Work Package 3: Development of teachers’ capabilities and skills to teach in virtual environments
This work package futher develops the teaching possibilities in VR/XR lab. Focus is on upgrading the premises, technology and simulations implemented in the earlier project. The planned deliverables for this WP are
Work Package 4: Integration of complementary virtual location-independent campus spaces
This work package develops a description of technical best practices and examples for virtualization of certain campus environments based on the piloting. The long-term goal is to be able to further develop certain virtual environments as integrated parts of Åbo Akademi’s digital production environment. Planned deliverables for this WP are
Work Package 5: Adapting Åbo Akademi University’s existing physical spaces for the new educational solutions
This project is the last WP of the DUTAR project. This WP will adjust the remaining physical teaching premises to meet the requirements and the same quality criteria for digital teaching methods as the newer premises. The planned deliverables of this WP are
What’s the purpose of DUTAR project blog?
This blog is used to communicate relevant topics around DUTAR project. Any of the project group members can blog at any time. Blogging is a part of the DUTAR project communication plan. We use several alternative communication channels to reach all relevant audiences, such as project stakeholders, personnel and students.
The topics in this blog vary from common project status updates to project event invitations. Feel free to propose any DUTAR topics you would like to learn more about, we will be happy to blog about them!
-Päivi
What is SAFe and why do we apply it in DUTAR project?
Many of you working with software projects are familiar with SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) methods, but they might seem distant to other personnel. SAFe is commonly applied for managing work for any larger business programs or projects, specifically such that consist of several sub-projects that need to be synchronized.
SAFe is already in use in several Finnish universities, also the Digivision2030 program applies SAFe. Each organization typically has its own customized version of SAFe, implementations vary from using the basic terminology to building complete organizations based on the roles and rituals defined in SAFe. SAFe is declared to be the world’s most trusted system for business agility today.
What does this mean in practice and how can I get involved with the project?
The project groups plan the deliverables quarterly, in so-called increments (PI, program increment). The intention is to deliver concrete value at the end of each increment. Increments are typically 8-12 weeks long, and in DUTAR we apply 12 weeks increments. Increment delivers incremental value based on a common goal after a fixed period of time. The intention with this approach is to produce complete usable deliverables, instead of getting started with several tasks without completing any of them within the increment.
The produced value is presented in so called increment demo sessions, which are open to anyone, mandatory for relevant stakeholders. The intention with the demo sessions is to present the results, ask for feedback and guidance, and gather input for planning the next increment. Participating in the demo sessions is an efficient way to be involved in DUTAR project. The sessions are announced in intranet and the enrollment is done via OSS system. The first sessions will be published later during autumn 2023.
More information about DUTAR project will follow on this blogsite shortly! -Päivi
PS. If you are interested in learning more about SAFe, visit Scaled Agiles pages.
