This document discusses the use of virtual and augmented reality technologies in education. It begins with an overview of the state of the art in VR/AR technologies, including the reality-virtuality continuum and key enablers like inside-out tracking and haptics. Examples of education applications are then presented, such as using AR as a teaching aid, VR for arts and engineering, and AR for wayfinding and chemistry. The document concludes with suggestions for getting started with VR/AR in education, such as using inexpensive hardware and free software, taking an introductory course, and completing a survey on VR/AR in education.
1. Bangor – 18 June
Martin Hamilton, Futurist
Virtual and augmented
reality in education
Photo: Graffiti art, Digbeth, Birmingham
CC-BY Martin Hamilton
10. AR as a teaching aid
Virtual and augmented reality in education - Connect More 201910 Video credit: Matt Ramirez
11. VR in arts and engineering
Virtual and augmented reality in education - Connect More 201911 Photo credit: Jisc
12. Wayfinding in AR
Virtual and augmented reality in education - Connect More 201912 Video credit: engadget
13. Chemistry in VR
Virtual and augmented reality in education - Connect More 201913 Video credit: engadget
14. 3. Getting started
14 Virtual and augmented reality in education - Connect More 2019
15. Immersive video
15
An effective storytelling medium?
But…
Does it live up to the hype?
Is it accessible to non-specialists?
Can we create a feasible workflow?
Does it need a different creative “eye”?
Virtual and augmented reality in education - Connect More 2019
Photo credit: Samsung Gear 360 camera,
CC-BY Martin Hamilton
16. 360 video
Virtual and augmented reality in education - Connect More 201916
Video credit: 360 video,
CC-BY Chris Thomson
17. 360 video
Virtual and augmented reality in education - Connect More 201917
Video credit: 360 video,
CC-BY Chris Thomson
18. Bridges – an immersive story
Virtual and augmented reality in education - Connect More 201918
Video credit: 360 video,
CC-BY Chris Thomson
20. Next steps
20
• You can do a lot with cheap hardware and
free software
• Jisc intro to AR/VR course – in depth version
of this session
• Experience a VR day in the life of Natalie, a
near future student, in the exhibition area
• Take our edtech challenge:
tinyurl.com/jisc-edtech
• Complete our AR/VR survey:
ji.sc/ar-vr-in-education
Virtual and augmented reality in education - Connect More 2019
Photo credit: Natalie_4.0 VR experience
CC-BY Martin Hamilton
22. Up next:
Now Lunch
13:30 Choose one of the following three sessions:
How are your staff and students using digital?
Ruth Drysdale, senior co-design manager, Jisc.
Room: S3-5
Future fit: bringing together digital practices, learning resources and libraries
Lis Parcell, subject specialist (libraries and digital resources), Jisc.
Room: Theatre
Campuses for the future: a panel interview and discussion
Jason Miles-Campbell, head of Jisc Scotland and Jisc Northern Ireland.
Room: S4-2
Editor's Notes
It feels like we have been talking about virtual and augmented reality for a long time – the difference is that now the tech has leapt out of the labs and the hands of early adopters and started to become truly mainstream. In this brief introduction we’ll look at some of the most intriguing technological developments and the implications they could have for educators, and take a look at how you can get started with the technology without having to learn how to code
This short video from Jisc and a few of our collaborators sets the scene for what we are calling Education 4.0 – the opportunities and challenges associated with fourth industrial revolution technologies like AR, VR and AI. We hope that this will help to set the scene for today’s session.
The eagle eyed amongst you will note that there is a deliberate mistake (well, not really!) – Basingstoke University is actually Basingstoke College of Technology
// YouTube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVWHp8FsV1w
Today’s session is in three parts – we’ll look at the state of the art, education applications, and then how you can get started. Also a spoiler here: this session is a cut down version of a course that Jisc now offers in VR and AR. If you found it interesting please do talk to us here today or your account manager about booking on the course. We are holding it as part of the Sticky Campus sessions around the country, but also happy to come to your institution too.
This diagram shows how there is a continuum between the wholly real and the wholly virtual, with augmented reality and “augmented virtuality” sitting in the middle. It’s important to note that whilst we have shown you lots of pictures of people wearing headsets, there is a lot that can be done with augmented reality simply using your phone or tablet – as anyone who has ever played Pokemon Go will know!
There was a time not long ago when there were a lot of competing VR and AR systems and hardware, but the last couple of years have seen a crucial development – the building in of these capabilities to the world’s mobile operating systems through Android’s ARCore and the iOS ARKit framework. Suddenly everyone developing mobile AR and VR apps has a common software substrate to target. These frameworks provide features such as:
Light estimation
Learning the environment
User interaction
Anchor objects
We often tend to think of VR as a completely virtual experience, but with recent improvements in tracking technology there are now a number of products that let us track our movements in the real world and even interact with objects that we find. In this video we take a virtual tour through a pharaoh’s tomb, holding a blazing torch to help us see where we’re going. This so-called “inside out” tracking uses sensors built into the VR headset.
// YouTube video description
Walking through a Pharaoh Tomb - A visit combining Oculus and Mocap, by Artanim Foundation
Real Virtuality is a multi-user immersive platform combining motion capture with VR headsets: the users can freely move within the physical space while virtually visiting the recreated interior of a pharaoh’s tomb and interacting with 3D objects or other users using the sense of touch. The project was select at the Siggraph 2015 Immersive Realities (VR/AR) contest and will be demonstrated during the conference at Real-Time Live!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAacQLEFF_Q
Combining the action of walking with haptic interaction.
Redirected walking is a method used by developers to trick the mind into thinking they are walking in a straight line when in fact they are slightly moving on a curved/different path in the real world. This enables up to a 26% gain or 14% loss in distance travelled or 49% gain or 20% loss in rotation (yaw) without user detection.
I'd heard that if you accessed the simulation with a new state-of-the-art immersion rig, it was almost impossible to tell the OASIS from reality.
// YouTube video description
Unlimited Corridor by Keigo Matsumoto
Redirected WalkingとVIsuo-Haptic Interactionを組み合わせた新たなVR体験システムです The main contribution is to realize an efficient redirected working (RDW) technique by utilizing haptic cues for strongly modifying our spatial perception. Some research has shown that users can be redirected on a circular arc with a radius of at least 22 m without being able to detect the inconsistency by showing a straight path in the virtual world. However, this is still too large to enable the presentation of a demonstration in a restricted space. Although most of RDW techniques only used visual stimuli, we recognize space with multi-modalities. Therefore, we propose an RDW method using the visuo-haptic interaction, and develop the system, which displays a visual representation of a flat wall and users virtually walk straight along it, although, in reality, users walk along a convex surface wall with touching it. For the demonstration, we develop the algorithm, with which we can modify the amount of distortion dynamically to make a user walk straight infinity and turn a branch freely. With this system, multiple users can walk an endless corridor in a virtual environment at the same time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THk92rev1VA
This all sounds great if you’re a gamer or a technologist, but what is the significance for us working in education? What can we really do with the tech that will improve the student experience and wellbeing, reduce cognitive load and improve learning outcomes? We’ve picked a few examples that I’ll talk you through next.
Demo showing how AR could be used to help an engineer identify parts by overlaying virtual labels – viewed on a tablet rather than a headset
Virtual art is becoming increasingly interesting as a medium in its own right, and VR can be a way to experience creations like never before – fly right through them, make objects that would be physically impossible in the real world, experiment with perspective, colours and textures at the click of a button. Many of these same techniques can have practical applications in engineering, in areas as diverse as automotive and aeronautical engineering, architecture and civil engineering.
And then there’s one of the biggest headaches for any new student – finding your way around campus and understanding where the key resources and facilities you’ll need are to be found. Here we have a short video illustrating Google’s new AR mode in Google Maps, which flashes up virtual signage as you hold your phone up to help you navigate and find points of interest. This is rolling out to Pixel phones as a beta and then we expect it will become available on most devices running recent versions of Android in the next 6-12 months.
In this video we can see chemical molecules being manipulated in 3D in a virtual reality environment developed to help with the discovery and development of new drugs. It’s like those ball and stick models we’ve all played with at school, but revved up to the next level – and people can come together in the virtual world from across the real world to study the new molecules and compounds and examine their properties.
So how can you take some baby steps with VR and AR? We’ll look at one particular example here today, and I hope you will be motivated to go back home and try this out yourselves. If you do, please do get in touch and let us know how you get on.
As this is only a short session, we’re going to look at one particular application – using 360 degree video to create compelling immersive stories about a particular subject. In this case we’ll make a video about Newcastle, the city where I live. Let’s see if this can be an effective medium for story telling, and how accessible the tech is to someone who doesn’t know anything about VR.
Here you can see the video that our little camera captures – it has two wide angle lenses, one on either side of the body, and then uses software to “stitch” together the photos and videos from the two cameras to create a perfect sphere. Get used to seeing yourself, your tripod, thumb etc – although there are a wide range of free and paid-for editing tools that will let you blank out details you don’t want people to see, such as replacing them with a product logo or creator’s contact details.
How do we turn this raw video clip into a story? Several of the vendors of 360 camera hardware also provide editing software – here is the Samsung Gear 360 editing software, which I’ve used to make a short video. You don’t need to know all the ins and outs of VR and 360 video editing to work it, as there are a number of common features to most video editing apps. What’s different here is that you can move the image around in 360 degrees by dragging the arrows in the top left of the main video clip window to see different perspectives.
And here’s the finished result – I’ve added a soundtrack and edited several clips together to tell a story about our family’s move to Newcastle, framed by the city’s famous bridges. Let’s watch it together.
Notice how the video player embedded in the slide presentation doesn’t know what to do with the 360 video content. This is just one example of the many ways in which immersive content isn’t fully supported even in today’s tech ecosystem. You could experience the bridges story by putting your phone into a cheap “cardboard” style VR headset but as we have the projector here we’ll switch to watching it via YouTube in the web browser. Watch as we look around and experience the sights and sounds of one of the UK’s greatest cities, while I tell my family’s tale.
// YouTube video link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7sEhZX5zFM
We’ll wrap up the session now with a few closing thoughts, and then throw the floor open to any questions or comments you may have about what you’ve seen and heard today
So what can you do next? I hope the immersive story example has helped to show you that there’s a lot you can do with bog standard phone hardware and fairly inexpensive digital cameras – in the region of £200-£300. There’s a longer version of this session available as a Jisc course, which you might be interested in coming along to, and you can experience a day in the life of a near future student in our Natalie_4.0 exhibit at Connect More. We’re looking to see what we can best do to help our members to get up and running with AR and VR, so please do complete our survey and let us know how your institution is using, or interested in using, these technologies.
So that’s it from me today – thank you ever so much for coming along. We hope you found this session useful, and that you enjoy your time at Connect More.