Tag: Higher Education

Teaching Using Tivoli Cloud VR at Simon Fraser University

Steve DiPaola and Jeremy Turner at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbis, Canada, are using the social VR platform Tivoli Cloud VR to teach courses. SFU News reported on their work:

Virtual teaching has become the new norm at post-secondary institutions during the current pandemic. As instructors adapt, SFU researchers Steve DiPaola and Jeremy Turner see opportunities to push virtual worlds further—as they are doing this semester by enabling their students to become avatars.

Students and instructors are using Tivoli Cloud VR in classes led by DiPaola, a professor in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology, and Turner, a Cognitive Sciences instructor, to set up their own personal avatars and join the virtual classroom. The researchers are using the new, open source virtual reality platform to experiment with advanced and cutting-edge VR techniques.

In the virtual classroom, users can navigate about the room and talk to other users. The platform is built to have fully functional media surfaces, allowing users to display slides, media files, and show videos within the virtual classroom.

CTV News also covered their work (there’s also a video you can watch at that link):

DiPaola, who specializes in virtual reality at SFU’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology, said students “attend” class by logging in to the open source virtual reality platform, or they can stream the class on Twitch.

The technology is also being used to train nursing students in Australia, allowing them to complete their practicums virtually, because they’re not currently allowed in hospitals.

“We’re starting it in Australia where we’ve got approval to do it,” DiPaola explained, “and we’re doing it in simulated ways with simulated avatars.”

What’s next? The professors said it is not out of the realm of possibility for an instructor to recreate environments such as dig sites for an archaeology class, for example.

“We think there’s advantages for all kinds of training,” DiPaola said.

For now, Turner teaches two cognitive sciences classes, each of which has between 80 to 100 students.

Inside Jeremy Turner’s virtual classroom in Tivoli Cloud VR (image source: SFU)

I’m looking forward to see what Steve and Jeremy do next!

Using Social VR to Teach an Emerging Technologies Class at UNC Chapel Hill

Steven King is an associate professor of multimedia journalism and emerging technologies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, holding a joint appointment with the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media and the Kenan-Flagler Business School. In his work, King combines computer science concepts, human-centered design and storytelling to create new ways to present information through emerging technologies, such as virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence and other interactive media forms, such as interactive data-driven graphics.

Steven King uses AltspaceVR to deliver a virtual course (image source)

When the university was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic last year, Steven used both Mozilla Hubs and AltspaceVR to create a virtual classroom for his students:

If you ask a UNC student what their remote classroom experience has consisted of, they will likely tell you about video lectures through Zoom. But for students in Steven King’s class, they are experiencing remote learning differently — through virtual reality.

“I’m always trying to figure out a better way to teach and communicate,” King, a professor at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media, said. “I know virtual reality is an immersive experience.”

King built a virtual 3D version of his classroom, which allows his students to walk around in the classroom and break out into groups. 

He said he has tested out a lot of different platforms for hosting 3D classrooms. The first experience, he said, was through Mozilla Hubs. But King said his class will likely stick to AltspaceVR because of how pleased the students have been with it.

A virtual classroom in AltspaceVR (image source)

The Raleigh News & Observer reported:

“When you’re faced with a crisis, these are times to step up and figure things up and make new discoveries,” King said. “We don’t need to limit ourselves to the tools we have. We need to develop new tools to move us forward.”

King sent Oculus Go Virtual Reality headsets to his 28 students to use at home. King and the students built their own avatars, and they are all attending class together in a virtual world as robots, panda bears, ducks and other characters. King chose the superhero Ironman as his avatar.

The emerging technologies class was tailor-made for this type of experiment, King said. Students had become familiar with the technology throughout the semester while learning about artificial intelligence and augmented reality.

Steven wrote about his experience developing and delivering the course in a four-part series of Medium posts (here’s a link to part one). He described how he acclimated his students to AltspaceVR:

To help the students prepare for class. I gave the students an assignment to be completed before the first class hosted in AltspaceVR. I asked every student to signup for an account, go through the tutorial in their home space, and to go to the InfoZone, which is a tutorial in the form of a social fair about going to events. The final step of the assignment was to send me a friend request. I also recorded a video on how to enter the room/event…

This assignment was critical to the success of the next class. I needed the students to work through any technical issues on their own and to feel confident in another social VR environment. Once I got a friend request, I added them to the group so they could see the private event…

Most students arrived early and were ready to go. I let them spend several minutes interacting and exploring the space. There was lots of personal chatting, like I would see before an in-person class, which has been absent in my Zoom class.

The pandemic provided a golden opportunity which professors like Steven used to good advantage to provide their students with an introduction to social VR used for educational purposes. You can find out more about Steven and his work via his personal website.

The University of Michigan’s XR Initiative and the Extended Reality Nuclear Reactor Laboratory Project

The University of Michigan‘s Center for Academic Innovation founded an XR Initiative in September 2019, to work with all the U of M’s schools and colleges to fund new projects and provide consultation on the use of VR/AR/MR technology to support teaching and research.

The State of XR and Immersive Learning Outlook Report 2021 (available to download here), recently published by the Immersive Learning Research Network, describes one such project:

At the University of Michigan, the Center for Academic Innovation seeded six new XR projects in spring 2020 as part of an ongoing effort to fully embrace immersive education. One upcoming project explores the challenges of working within nuclear reactors. The school’s Ford Nuclear Reactor in Michigan permanently shut down in 2003 and was decommissioned in the years following, leaving the top-ranked university program without a research reactor. This XR project will develop an Extended Reality Nuclear Reactor Laboratory simulation where students can virtually walk around the reactor, look into the core, and interact with the control panel.

As Brendan Kochunas, project manager and assistant professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences described it (2020): “In reality, one does not simply walk up next to an operating nuclear reactor core, but in virtual reality one can. We can also overlay simulation results on the virtualized physical systems allowing students to experience neutron fields or temperature fields visually, where in reality this is not possible.”

The faculty and staff newspaper UM Record provides some more background:

The College of Engineering is home to the No. 1 nuclear engineering program in the country. For several decades up to the early 2000s, the program included training at a physical nuclear reactor. The Ford Nuclear Reactor, originally established as a WWII memorial under the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Project, permanently shut down in 2003.

It was decommissioned over the next four years, leaving U-M as one of the only programs without a research reactor, both in the Top 5-ranked university programs and the Big 10, said Brendan Kochunas, project manager and assistant professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences.

The Extended Reality Nuclear Reactor Laboratory simulation would allow some retired courses that used the Ford Nuclear Reactor to be taught again to upper level undergraduates and graduate students.

“I hope to gain experience and insight into how to apply XR technologies in a practical way to enhance education and research in the field of nuclear engineering,” Kochunas said. “I think XR has such potential for this area of science, or really any area of science where the reality is you have a physical system that is expensive or potentially hazardous.”

An article by Sara Norman on the University of Michigan College of Engineering website describes the project in more technical detail:

Over the past year, a project team within the U-M Department of Nuclear Engineering & Radiological Sciences (NERS) has been working with the XR Initiative in the Center for Academic Innovation to develop the Extended Reality Nuclear Reactor Laboratory—a virtual representation of the now decommissioned Ford Nuclear Reactor (FNR) that was once the center of the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Project (MMPP).

Yuxuan Liu, a member of the project team and an Assistant Research Scientist within NERS, has received a Simulation Grant from the Office of the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education (ADUE) to develop a simulation of heat transfer in the original FNR. Understanding the heat transfer in a nuclear power reactor is essential to its operation and maintaining safety, making this virtual experience an important lesson of the NERS Extended Reality Nuclear Reactor Laboratory course. The other member of the project team is NERS Prof. Brendan Kochunas.

The XR Initiative is a good example of a university-wide program to make XR technology more accessible on campus and encourage its use in higher education, working with university faculty to actively look for new ideas and opportunities to support immersive learning projects, and enhance students’ learning experience. I look forward to seeing other such initiatives spring up on university campuses!

Creating Virtual Learning Spaces Using Mozilla Hubs at the New School

The New School, a private university in New York City, has recently launched a program using the social VR platform Mozilla Hubs as a component of classes. This is an initiative of the New School’s XReality Center, a new research centre and testbed with four core components:

  1. Immersive Learning: Create a resource hub for inspiring XR initiatives within the university with the focus on developing new learning models, design, storytelling, performing arts and the future of learning;
  2. XR and HCI Labs: Learn, design and experience what immersive worlds, XR and Human Computer Interaction (HCI) interfaces offer through our workshops, events, virtual and lab environments;
  3. Research: Lead and conduct research to create new knowledge and better understand the efficacy and impact of immersive and emerging technology in education and across industries; and
  4. Partnerships: Develop XR projects and products with internal and external clients and partners.

Starting in 2020, the XReality Centre began a program to create virtual spaces using Mozilla Hubs to enhance the learning experience:

Starting in Spring 2020, the XReality Center has embarked on creating a set of virtual spaces in Mozilla Hubs as a way to enhance student engagement and provide new opportunities for collaboration. During the fall semester the XReality Center will host virtual events, class visits and other social activities in these spaces. The XReality Center is interested in partnering with faculty, programs, schools, and administrative departments to develop and offer virtual teaching and learning initiatives.

The State of XR and Immersive Learning Outlook Report 2021 (available to download here), recently published by the Immersive Learning Research Network, describes one such application:

In a year marked by lack of access to VR labs, Mozilla Hubs gave opportunities for students to use collaborative tools and explore creating together in social worlds. At Parsons School of Design in Fall 2020, over 100 students enrolled in the Immersive Storytelling course met weekly in Mozilla Hubs to co-create virtual narratives, play, and build worlds.

Inspired by the work at the XR and HCI Innovation Labs at The New School, faculty and students from across the Parsons Art Media, Technology, and Fashion schools exhibited their 3D models and presented projects in virtual galleries using audio, video, and an abundance of student creativity. While students acknowledge the limitations of the Mozilla Hub interface, most reported that they enjoyed the opportunity to be in a shared space. One of the students summed it up: “I think it is very fun to be in a virtual world, for me it is a place where I can explore my ideas that may not be possible to create in the real world.”

Four examples of student-created worlds from the Immersive Storytelling course at The New School’s Parsons School of Design (image source: iLRN State of XR and Immersive Learning Outlook Report 2021)

The use of a simple, accessible platform such as Mozilla Hubs makes it easy for the university to try new things more quickly and easily, without making a massive investment of time and money in building their own platform. I believe that we can expect to see more institutions of higher education set up programs similar to the New School’s XReality Center, as a way to incorporate XR technology in the courses they teach.