Lyndia CHEN*, Raudhah THONGKAM, Jie Ying MAK, Magdeline NG Tao Tao, and Steven CHOW
TEL Imaginarium, NUS Libraries
Chen, L., Thongkam, R., Mak, J. Y., Ng, M. T. T., & Chow, S. (2023). Bringing immersive technology closer to education and research in the NUS community [Lightning talk]. In Higher Education Campus Conference (HECC) 2023, 7 December, National University of Singapore. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/hecc2023proceedings/bringing-immersive-technology-closer-to-education-and-research-in-the-nus-community/
SUB-THEME
Interdisciplinarity and Education
KEYWORDS
Technology education, immersive technologies, game-based learning, training, student engagement
CATEGORY
Lightning Talks
ABSTRACT
To prepare for the digital era, it is important to familiarise students, educators, and the NUS community with various technologies that will soon be a mainstay in education, work, and daily lives, especially for immersive technology that is reshaping research and interaction with information. While its potential is promising, it can be challenging to keep up with the development of immersive technology (Dengel et al., 2021).
Some reasons for a lower than desired uptake of immersive technology are the ever-evolving novelty of the technology which can be overwhelming for a user who wants to start exploring the technology, the unfamiliarity and lack of use cases that can be done in a tertiary education setting, and the systemic difficulties in implementing immersive technology across curriculum (Dengel et al., 2021; Häfner, 2020).
As a team and a space in NUS Libraries, the Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) Imaginarium tries to raise awareness of immersive technology and its educational potential to the NUS community by organising bite-sized learning experiences through three main ways—short hands-on workshops, exciting game competitions, and tours that showcase popular tech tools and devices.
Underlying all the initiatives implemented by TEL Imaginarium is a strategy to engage participants, which its elements are succinctly described by Windham (2005), as described in Table 1.
Table 1
Principles to engage digital era learners [Adapted from Windham (2005)]
| Interaction | A classroom setting with ample opportunities to not just communicate, interact and collaborate with peers and educators, but also with multimedia material. Activities are organised to allow the building of connections in and out of the classroom setting. |
| Exploration | Give learners an opportunity to explore and come up with their own conclusions, critique established literature, and develop an output or understanding with their unique stamp on it. |
| Relevancy | Give learners an opportunity to impact real communities, interact with real-life case studies and applications, to acquire relevant skills and experiences. |
| Multimedia | Provide a variety of media and keep them short and alternating to produce diverse content that meets the class’ learning objectives. |
| Instruction | Basic research skills are still required to help learners navigate the information landscape, which can include teaching how to find, organise, evaluate, mix and use information correctly. |
Short hands-on workshops
The Jumpstart Miniseries are 1–2-hour workshops conducted every semester to increase familiarity with common immersive technologies. Participants from various disciplines get together to develop an output by presenting ideas in novel ways. The work is then showcased on an online exhibition platform to show possibilities of applications to research to inspire. Gamification elements such as digital badges are introduced to motivate learners to take charge of their learning and development for immersive technology (Huotari & Hamari, 2012).
Exciting games
In the name of education, the TEL Imaginarium team carefully weaves captivating storylines, game development concepts, and applications of immersive technology to develop escape room games. Packaged as a game competition with prize incentives, the NUS community can have fun pitting their wits to solve puzzles while learning about immersive technology. The game-based learning approach resulted in the popular reception of the games and successful engagement of the community (Kraiger et al., 1993) to share the technology’s potential in research and learning applications. Multiple partnerships were forged that increased the uptake of learning with immersive technology in NUS (Ketelhut & Schifter, 2011), such as with the Global Relations office to use games to orientate their incoming exchange students, and with the NUS Health and Wellbeing unit to develop escape room games revolving around the theme of mental health.
Tour showcases
TEL Imaginarium used to offer tours to interested NUS members to showcase the variety of immersive technology tools in the Library. Participants got to try out the applications and learn from use cases developed in NUS such as the 360 virtual tour application of NUS Libraries, which resulted in some notable interdisciplinary collaborations, such as with the Department of Biological Sciences where the team co-creates assessment tasks using immersive technology tools. This generated interest from the NUS community and NUS Libraries decided to organise yearly Tech Central Carnival events to do outreach on a wider scale over organising individual tours.
REFERENCES
Dengel, A., Buchner, J., Mulders, M., & Pirker, J. (2021). Beyond the horizon: Integrating immersive learning environments in the everyday classroom. 2021 7th International Conference of the Immersive Learning Research Network (iLRN), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.23919/iLRN52045.2021.9459368
Gilbert, J. (2007). Catching the Knowledge Wave: Redefining knowledge for the post-industrial age. Education Canada, 47(3), 4-8. Canadian Education Association. Retrieved June 2023 from https://www.maailmakool.ee/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/gilbert-catching-knowledge-wave.pdf
Häfner P. (2020). Categorization of the benefits and limitations of immersive environments for education. Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Modeling & Applied Simulation (MAS 2020), 154-59. https://doi.org/10.46354/i3m.2020.mas.020
Huotari, K., & Hamari, J. (2012). Defining gamification: A service marketing perspective. Proceeding of the 16th International Academic MindTrek Conference, 17–22. https://doi.org/10.1145/2393132.2393137
Ketelhut, D. J., & Schifter, C. C. (2011). Teachers and game-based learning: Improving understanding of how to increase efficacy of adoption. Computers & Education, 56(2), 539–46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2010.10.002
Kraiger, K., Ford, J. K., & Salas, E. (1993). Application of cognitive, skill-based, and affective theories of learning outcomes to new methods of training evaluation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78(2), 311–28. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.78.2.311
Windham, C. (2005). The student’s perspective. In D. Oblinger & J. Oblinger (Eds), Educating the Net generation (pp. 5.1-5.16). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE. Retrieved June 2023, from https://cyberlearn.hes-so.ch/pluginfile.php/804144/mod_resource/content/2/pub7101.pdf