Activity: Immersive learning resources creation

Transversal Skills:

Creative and critical thinking

Learning to learn

Interpersonal and socio-emotional skills

Teaching- Learning Approach:

Virtual Reality simulation

Miller Pyramid

(More information)

Learning outcomes

By the end of the activity, students should be able to:

Have a global vision of what XR is, what it encompasses, and what it is useful for
Communicate and debate with other team members the process they will follow to achieve all items to do

Regarding transversal skills, students should be able to:

Interpersonal and socio-emotional skills:

Express ideas clearly and fluently
Use precise and descriptive/content-specific vocabulary to enhance the topic or message
Share information in an organized and interesting way
Show empathy and use non-verbal communication and active listening
Perform tasks efficiently and carefully
Persevere in the face of difficulties
Develop positive and emotionally safe interaction and to develop and co-create teamwork
Work cooperatively with others
Develop an empathetic leadership by understanding the needs of others and being aware of their feelings and thoughts, and to facilitate collaborative and participatory problem-solving
Create a non-discrimination atmosphere
Facilitate conflict resolution, remain calm under pressure, and control one’s emotions in conflict situations

Critical and creative thinking:

Identify and deal creatively with unexpected, unforeseen, and complex situations that can be exploited, and to evaluate different solutions
Acquire, process, produce, and evaluate information critically and from the perspectives of different fields and decisions, taking into account both individual and community perspectives
Develop innovative solutions to answer different questions

Learning to learn:

Self-report one’s feelings, thoughts, and effort concerning a certain task in order to perform tasks more effectively
Plan, monitor and assess one’s understanding and performance on a certain task

Brief description of the activity

This activity starts with an explanation of what is Extended Reality (XR) and what it includes. Students will become familiar with Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, and Virtual Reality, identifying their differences and similarities. The second part is a familiarization with VR headsets to understand how an immersive experience can help them in learning transversal skills. See how the experiences are like and what is the interaction with the user, allows a better understanding on how the experience should be designed. The main part of the activity is generating an immersive learning experience from the beginning (developing the characters and the script) to the end (recording the scenes and assembling the experience).

Activity plan: step by step

Before the activity

Materials

For a correct development of this activity are needed:

Virtual Reality headsets (Cardboard)
Smartphone
Headphones
Internet connection
360º Video Camera (for example GoPro Fusion)
Laptop

Students and activity organization

Students will be asked to work in small groups, between 6-8 students preferably. This activity is scheduled to last approximately 7 sessions, although this timing can be adapted according to the needs of the institution, course or group.

Things to take into account prior to the activity:

Context. Is the activity appropriate for the number of students I have? Is the activity appropriate for the learning objectives of the subject in which it will be implemented?
Materials necessary for its implementation. Do I have a proper room? Do I have all the consumable and non-consumable materials that will be used during the activity?
Human resources necessary for its implementation. Is one teacher enough? What knowledge should the teacher/s have? If more than one teacher is needed, are all of them coordinated/aligned?

During the activity

The key elements of the development of the activity are described below in 7 sessions:

Session 1. XR definitions and examples (1h)

Explain students what is XR with examples. Immersive technologies, also known as extended reality (XR) technologies, refer to a set of technologies that aim to create a sense of immersion and presence for users by merging the physical and digital worlds. These technologies allow users to interact with computer-generated environments and objects in a way that feels natural and realistic. The three main categories of immersive technologies are:

Augmented Reality (AR)

Marked-based
Location-based
Markerless

Mixed Reality (MR)

Digital Content integration
Richer interaction

Virtual Reality (VR)

Computer generated imagery
Interactive 360º video

In this VR Guide you can find information about immersive technologies.

Empathy exercise

After viewing this video, https://youtu.be/iXHil1TPxvA, discuss the following questions with the group:

When was the time you felt empathy for someone else—when you really understood and identified with another person’s experience? What had that person experienced? Why and how could you understand how they were feeling?
How much do you think virtual experiences can affect our feelings and our behavior?
Milk states “when you’re sitting there in her room, watching her, you’re not watching it through a television screen, you’re not watching it through a window, you’re sitting there with her. When you look down, you’re sitting on the same ground that she’s sitting on. And because of that, you feel her humanity in a deeper way. You empathize with her in a deeper way.” Do you agree that VR has the power to create empathy? How can this tool be used in a way to benefit our world today?

Session 2. VR familiarization (45 min)

Students begin their first contacts with Virtual Reality headsets. Explain to students how to use a cardboard device. You have the information in this tutorial. They can use Youtube VR (360º videos) for searching 360º experiences related to their studies and transversal skills. Ask them to choose the two most interesting for them and prepare a slide for each one to share with the class explaining why it is interesting.

Session 3. 360º camera familiarization (45 min)

Show students quick start tutorials for using the 360º camera. Probably it is necessary to connect it with a smartphone. They have to learn to make captures, and general functionalities. We recommend GoPro Fusion Camera. Split students in different groups and perform a test filming on a campus place of their choice.

Session 4. Planning Immersive Learning Experience (2h)

Every group has to think about the experience they want to produce taking in account some items:

Motivation & goals

Pedagogical goals
Pedagogical Framework

Transversal skills involved

Dimensions
Learning Outputs

Personas

Name (Surname)
Image (clear identification among the team).
Personal and professional profile.
Goals and pains.
Psychographics (behaviors, attitudes, opinions, and motivations are what make your personas human).
Generate a characters map relating them together.

Storyboard
- Set up: onboarding, briefing. We situate the user.
- Confrontation: The challenge arises.
- Resolution: conclusion, debriefing.

Keep a simple structure (at least initially)
Write a character to root for (or against).
Immediate feedback is better.

Interaction

Decision points
Feedback on decisions (textual, audio, acting…)
Branching
Free speech + Autoevaluation
Learning activities

Filming planning

Physical scenario
Atrezzo
Characters involved
Camera position (beware of stitch lines)
Scenes flow (sequence and branching)

Who is going to use this experience?

Relevant professional background
Previous experience / knowledge
Age
Sex
VR technology familiarity
Context of use
….onboarding implications and more
users feelings during experience

Analyze

Read the script from start to finish
Always keep present the users and the pedagogical goals
Tag the script with pedagogical goals
Test it to see if it works
Get a fresh look from someone external to the process

Session 5. Filming Immersive Learning Experience (1.30h)

Scenes designed and planned by students are filmed by them with the 360º camera. They will need to prepare the scenarios, organize themselves into the different roles a shooting requires (director, script, actor/actress, camera….).

Session 6. Producing an Immersive Learning Experience (1.30h)

Use the program Warp VR Studio to prepare the script with different branches. Add questions to the user to force him to make decisions. Give the user feedback about his decisions. Here you have a lot of information about using Warp VR. Warp VR offers a free license for non-commercial productions.

Session 7. Presenting the Immersive Learning Experience (1.30h)

Students explain the process they had followed to design their Immersive Learning Experience and show the final result. They had to explain:

Motivation & goals
Transversal skills involved
Personas & Storyboard
Reflections on the whole process
Difficulties found / Next steps
How do they think it can be used (learning situations & methodologies)

Finally, students see their own Immersive Learning Experiences on Virtual Reality headsets. They were able to see the result of their efforts in developing a story with their characters, and the different resolution between the choices they had prepared. First they see the Immersive Learning Experience they have prepared, and later they could see the experiences produced by other groups.

After the activity

Make a short debriefing: ask them about their emotions, whether they felt overwhelmed during the activity and whether their peers aided them in overcoming this situation. Try to identify where and why teams did not work smoothly and altogether try to find an answer to what happened and what could have been done differently. Interdisciplinary work is key in this activity.

Role of teacher(s)

The teacher will explain sessions and in some of them s/he will act only as an observer of the activity. S/he will only intervene if a team asks for help, but it is preferable to encourage students to help each other. S/he will also intervene if undesirable behavior within or between teams is detected or in the event that teams don’t work together to solve problems.

Evaluation tool

Transversal skills are difficult to evaluate, particularly among big groups of students. Therefore, in this section we propose a tool for students to self-assess the development of these skills. The tool is divided into three dimensions: suitability of the learning activity, level of achievement of learning outcomes, and transferability to professional settings. You can adapt the dimensions and/or indicators that you use according to your teaching-learning context and needs.

Evaluation tool to self-assess the development of skills during the activity

For each of the following statements, select the best answer on a scale from 1 to 4, where 1 means “Not at all” and 4 indicates “Yes, totally”. N/A means “not applicable”.

	1	2	3	4	N/A
DIMENSION 1. Suitability of the learning activity
I found this learning activity adequate in terms of time
I found this learning activity adequate in terms of resources (material resources, physical space, etc.)
I found this learning activity adequate in terms of content
I found this learning activity engaging
I found this learning activity challenging
I found this learning activity disruptive in comparison with other learning methodologies
I found this learning activity useful to learn [add the subject]
I found this learning activity useful to retain knowledge
This learning activity motivated me to deepen my knowledge of [add subject or hard skill]
This learning activity allowed me to feel emotions that would be rather difficult to experience with other learning methodologies
I would recommend this learning activity to others
DIMENSION 2. Level of achievement of learning outcomes
This learning activity helped me to improve…
…my ability to [add a row for each learning outcome of the activity that you performed, both related to hard and transversal skills]
DIMENSION 3. Transferability to professional settings
After this learning activity…
…I will be better able to apply what I learned to my reality (everyday life, classroom, professional life)
…I feel more capable to perform in a professional setting
…I feel I can make better choices regarding professional situations
…I feel more prepared and self-confident to address professional situations
OPEN QUESTION – Use this space to explain whatever you think is remarkable from the learning activity, including strengths, weaknesses, improvements, potential uses, feelings or dilemmas you encountered during the activity.