ViLeArn - A social XR Platform for Learners and Teachers built with Reality Stack

2021-11-02

Title

ViLeArn - A Social XR Platform for Learners and Teachers Built with Reality Stack

Presenter

Florian Kern, Research Assistant

Company

Chair for Human-Computer Interaction, University of Würzburg

• So, good Morning Everyone and welcome to my presentation and VR demonstration at the EdTech Festival in 2021.
• My name is Florian Kern and I am working for the Chair of Human-Computer Interaction in Würzburg

Head of Chair

• Prof. Dr. Marc Erich Latoschik
• Over 25 years expertise in the HCI field

HCI Group

• 4 Professors
• 46 Employees
• 19 Student Workers

• Our chair is led by Prof. Dr. Marc Erich Latoschik with an expertise over 25 years in the HCI field.
• With 4 professors, 46 employees and 19 student workers the HCI Group has grown strongly in the past years.

Research

• Perceptual Computing
• Virtual, Mixed & Augmented Reality
• Articifial Intelligence

Applications

• Avatars, Agents & Roboters
• Social Interaction
• Training
• (E-)Learning
• Therapy
• Multimodal Interfaces
• Games & Gamification
• Digital Heritage

• Therefore, we could focus on a wide range of research topics including Perceptual Computing, Virtual, Mixed & Augmented Reality, and Articifical Intelligence.
• Our application areas are Avatars, Agents & Roboters, Social Interaction, Training, E-Learning, Therapy, Multimodal Interfaces, Games & Gamification, and Digital Heritage

XR Hub Bavaria

• Strengthen Bavaria as a media and business location for Extended Reality (XR)
• 3 Locations: Würzburg, München, and Nürnberg
• Funded by the Bavarian State Ministry of Digital Affairs

• As part of the XR Hub Bavaria, we would like to strengthen Bavaria as a media and business location for Extended Reality, XR.
• The XR Hub is located in Würzburg, Munich, and Nürnberg and is funded by the Bavarian State Ministry of Digital Affairs

Educational Technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using and managing appropriate technological processes and resources.

– Reflections on the 2008 AECT Definitions of the Field (Richey (2008))

• But in the next three days, we are discussing about education technology, which can be defined as “Educational Technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using and managing appropriate technological processes and resources.”

ViLeArn

• Virtual Situated Learning and Teaching with Avatars and Agents in Social Cyberspace

Cooperation

• Chair for School Pedagogy
• Prof. Dr. Silke Grafe

Funding

• Ministry for Education and Research

Website & Publication

• https://vilearn.hci.uni-wuerzburg.de
• Latoschik et al. (2019)

• The Vilearn project is a great example in terms of creating, using, and managing processes and resources.
• ViLeArn stands for Virtual situated Learning and teaching with Avatars and agents in social cyberspace. The project is funded by the Ministry for Education and Research.

Breaking Bad Behavior

• VR for training classroom management skills
• Companion tool for primary and secondary student teachers

Cooperation

• Chair for School Pedagogy
• Prof. Dr. Silke Grafe

Publications

• Latoschik et al. (2016)
• Lugrin et al. (2016)

• The ViLeArn project is based on earlier work of Breaking Bad Behavior, an immersive virtual reality system for training classroom management skills.
• BBB is developed in close cooperation with the chair for school pedagogy and is used as a companion tool for primary and secondary student teachers.

• ViLeArn explores situated collaborative virtual learning environments based on presence and social interaction using VR and AR.
• The goal is the promotion of competences and the increase of learning success with special consideration of availability, participation and inclusion.
• ViLeArn researches and develops the necessary basic technologies in close interdisciplinary cooperation between the Chair for Human-Computer Interaction and the Chair for School Pedagogy, led by Prof. Dr. Silke Grafe.
• In this project we are combining innovative media-didactic principles of classroom teaching and learning, as an interactive and collaborative process using digital media with current techniques of virtual and augmented reality.

• Some technical insights. The software application is developed with the Unity Game Engine. We are combining self-developed open source components with well known evaluated and established commercial products.
• With this, we are able to provide a social XR platform for teachers and learners, which can be used independently of their physical working place.

VR Seminar Session

• Wintersemester 21/22

Duration

• 8 Meetings, each Wednesday
• 1 Teacher
• 12 Student Teachers

Physical Space

• Remotely from home (Germany)

Equipment

• Oculus Rift S
• High-End VR Laptops

• In the past, we conducted several VR presentations, demonstrations, and seminars in ViLeArn.
• For example, in this semester we are conducting a school pedagogy seminar, were students are equipped with the Oculus Rift S HMD and High-End VR Laptops.
• Each Wednesday, students connect independently to the ViLeArn application and perform a collaborative VR seminar, from home.

VR Seminar Session

• Wintersemester 21/22

Equipment

• Oculus Rift S
• High-End VR Laptops

Video Tutorials

• Hardware
• Software
• In-Game (VR)

• To make this possible, students were instructed by written documents and videos how to use a VR device, and how to download the VR application. For the VR application itself, we provide an interactive VR tutorial explaining available features within the user’s private space.
• When problems are appearing, the students try to solve them at first by themselves and afterwards can contact the IT supports, which is provided by student workers, already familiar with the hardware and software.

Live VR Demo Session

Application Features in ViLeArn

Download: https://go.uniwue.de/hci-vilearn-edtech
Seminar: edtech-seminar-demo
Expiration: 2011-02-03

• Instead of showing a polished video of our application, we now, dive directly into VR.
• I will use a HP Reverb G2 and give you a VR Live demonstration. If you have a desktop-based VR device at home, feel free to join my seminar.
• You could download the application under the shown link. The Seminar room is: “edtech-seminar-demo”

Application Features

• Lobby Menu
• Private Room with VR Tutorial
• Social Room
• Interaction with the Tablet
• Laserpointer, Finger, Stylus
• Decker Presentation
• Excalidraw (Draw/Keyb.)
• Countdown Timer
• Presentation Sharing
• Breakout Rooms

Stylus: OTSS (Kern et al. (2021))

Cooperation Partners

• Internal: ViLeArn More, CoTeach, ViaVR, Vitras, WueDive, Digillabs
• External: University of Munich, Augsburg, Dortmund

The Reality Stack ≡

• Projects share the same requirements
• Use synergies of projects
• Conceptual Design and Developed Components

• Okay, thank you very much for following my VR demonstration. The Vilearn application will be extended and improved continuously. This is also supported by our growing partnerships with internal projects (Vilearn, CoTeach, WueDive, Digillabs, ViaVR) and also external Universities (TUM, AUG, DO). If you also interested in our application, we are happy to here from you.
• If we are coming back to the features of ViLeArn which I presented previously, it is noticeable, that many other projects share the same requirements. Therefore, we started to conceptualize and develop the Reality Stack.
• The idea of the Reality Stack is to use synergies of our projects and provide reusable and extendable software components.
• Great examples for this are the embodiment component and the network component.
• Therefore, the Reality Stack will help us to understand concepts, recognize synergies, and to quickly provide new software applications with varying features.

Thank you very much for your attention!

ViLeArn - A Social XR Platform for Learners and Teachers Built with Reality Stack 

Florian Kern (florian.kern@uni-wuerzburg.de) 

HCI Group, University of Würzburg
https://hci.uni-wuerzburg.de/ 

This presentation was created with the e-Authoring Tool “Decker,” get in touch with Samantha Monty at 11:15 (Decker: State-of-the-Art Universal and Interactive eLearning).

• In this talk I presented to you the ViLearn application which are developed at our chair in close cooperation with the chair for school pedagogy, and other internal and external partners.
• Second, I did a Live VR demonstration showing features for digital content creation and collaborative knowledge work in VR.
• Lastly, I put this into the context of the Reality Stack and now, happy to start the discussion with you.
• This presentation was created with the Decker e-Authoring Tool, get in touch with Samantha Monty during her presentation at Eleven Fifteen.
• Thank you very much for your attention

References

Kern, Florian, Peter Kullmann, Elisabeth Ganal, Kristof Korwisi, René Stingl, Florian Niebling, and Marc Erich Latoschik. 2021. “Off-the-Shelf Stylus: Using XR Devices for Handwriting and Sketching on Physically Aligned Virtual Surfaces.” Frontiers in Virtual Reality 2: 69. doi:10.3389/frvir.2021.684498.

Latoschik, Marc Erich, Florian Kern, Jan-Philipp Stauffert, Andrea Bartl, Mario Botsch, and Jean-Luc Lugrin. 2019. “Not Alone Here?! Scalability and User Experience of Embodied Ambient Crowds in Distributed Social Virtual Reality.” IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 25 (5): 2134–44. doi:10.1109/TVCG.2019.2899250.

Latoschik, Marc Erich, Jean-Luc Lugrin, Michael Habel, Daniel Roth, Christian Seufert, and Silke Grafe. 2016. “Breaking Bad Behavior: Immersive Training of Class Room Management.” In Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Virtual Reality Software and Technology, 317–18. VRST ’16. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. doi:10.1145/2993369.2996308.

Lugrin, Jean-Luc, Marc Erich Latoschik, Michael Habel, Daniel Roth, Christian Seufert, and Silke Grafe. 2016. “Breaking Bad Behaviors: A New Tool for Learning Classroom Management Using Virtual Reality.” Frontiers in ICT 3: 26. doi:10.3389/fict.2016.00026.

Richey, Rita C. 2008. “Reflections on the 2008 AECT Definitions of the Field.” TechTrends 52: 24–25.