Tag: UX

Pedagogical strategies for introducing 360° VR in class

Year 7 students at Trinity College are set the task of creating a vision of the school of the future using 360° VR as the medium of communication; these VR visions used to inform conversations in the school community from a student perspective. Before they begin the project, the class does an initial lesson to become familiar with the hardware and is guided through two brainstorming activities by teachers Jessica Simons and Steve Grant. These brainstorming activities are intended to get students thinking about safety in VR and have them identify engaging design feature of a 360° VR experience.

Students are asked to work in their small groups to use their desks which as whiteboards to write down a set of safety pointers for using VR. The teachers then guide a whole class discussion to come up with a set of safety guidelines that are synthesised by the teacher on a whiteboard. Here are some of the student’s safety ideas:

TRinity safety 2

Trinity safety 1

Trinity safety 4

This activity was followed by students experiencing a 360° tour using the headset and then having a whole class discussion about what made the tour engaging and what might have been improved. Here is a video except is from the whole group discussion on 360° design features guided by their teachers: 

These pedagogical strategies for first lessons with VR promote student agency and responsibility for safety and prime their imaginations and critical thinking skills through evaluation a user experience of the technology.

P.S. In case you want to put a face to the teachers in the video, Steve and Jessica are pictured below after the delivery of this lesson. To find out more about them go to the Team page of the VR School website.

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Designing a 360° VR boating safety resource for children

Associate Professor Erica Southgate has partnered with 360° company VRTY and NSW Maritime, the government agency responsible for marine safety and regulation, to develop a unique learning resource on boating safety for primary school aged students.

NSW Maritime currently undertake education programs on boating safety in schools and are now investing in the development of this digital learning resource to complement face-to-face delivery and promote mobile learning opportunities for students.

The 360° learning resource will cover areas such as the importance of life jackets, essential safety equipment on boats, and on-water awareness. It will include a child-centred narrative and interactive and informative multi-media pop-ups. Some of these pop-ups will be ‘easter eggs’ or fun findable content embedded in the resource for discovery learning. The learning affordances or special properties of 360° media are well suited to a learning resource on boating safety as students can be virtually transported out to a waterway to get a real feeling of what it is like to travel in vessel while maintaining awareness of safety. They can learn and practice this awareness in the security of the classroom or home. The project includes a participatory component where children will provide feedback on the design of the resource.

So far, we have brainstormed and storyboarded the resource with NSW Maritime staff. And, we have just returned from capturing 360° footage as the video illustrates. Throughout the rest of 2022, we will keep you updated on our progress on 360° Boating Safety Resource. Stay tuned.

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Southern Montessori School joins the VR School Study

Southern Montessori Middle School is excited to launch our VR project. Southern Montessori’s VR project is part of an integrated Humanities and Science unit based on the inquiry question: ‘How can we secure food for our future?’ Students will be using VR to create their own biome, identify problems arising from human impact, and find solutions to these problems. Students will be challenged to demonstrate their learning in a creative and engaging manner.

Southern Montessori Middle School is a mixed age year 7-9 community located in the southern suburbs of Adelaide with a strong focus on academics. We combine our thirty six Year 7, 8 and 9 students together and work in small, ability-based groups following the Australian Curriculum but presented with Montessori principles. We are committed to innovative approaches to learning that are not only relevant and engaging, but also prepare our students for their future.

Teachers Siobhan Curran and Toni Maddock have developed this unit of work and series of activities designed for students to not only think critically and creatively about the content, but also think creatively about how VR technology can be used as a tool to assist their learning. Having not used VR in the past, students and teachers alike are excited to take part in this research and to see what the students can achieve.

This post bought to you by teacher and co-researcher Toni Maddock

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Happy 5th birthday to the VR School Study

In late August 2021, the VR School study celebrated 5 years of ground-breaking research. Associate Professor Erica Southgate highlights three key findings from research so far:

Research papers and teaching resources are available on the VR School website under the Resources tab and there is a book for those who are interested:

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