Ulla Hemminki-Reijonen – Global campus

May 16, 2023May 16, 2023

Better learning design with co-creation

Before even thinking about product development, you need to identify clearly who are your users.

Can you really say you know what your end users need? What would be the coolest thing ever for them? What is important for them in their lives?

Some see themselves as experts in education because “everyone has gone to school”, and people easily reflect their own experiences. But if that was some 20 years ago, it is fair to say that things have changed in our society during that time. Even in the organization, that was founded in 1640 – the student generation is entirely different now than 20 years ago. Their everyday life and learning tools look very different. That’s why we keep meeting with our university students, who will ultimately be the end users of our solutions.

You don´t even know what to ask, before you go and talk to people.

Furthermore, we have students working with us on a regular basis. Having students as an integral part of our team, as a learning designer, I find reassurance in their presence next to me every day. Together, we engage in brainstorming sessions to re-imagine online learning and jointly make design decisions. This collaborative approach has led to numerous design changes based on the valuable student feedback. In fact, we have received ideas from students that surpass our own original concepts. It’s important to recognize that what we might perceive as enjoyable could be super boring for students, and vice versa.

What we have learned from co-creation is that you should never assume anything.

When designing solutions for international students as well, it has been even more valuable to have international student trainees on board in the team. This way, we have been able to see immediately if our ideas would be also working for example for students coming from global south. For example just this week we were able to test how an AI solution works in Arabic, and in another situation, we have changed the text and expressions to be more inclusive to different cultures. We have been also able to take into account the different educational traditions in higher education in our design: not all are used to reflect and present their own critical ideas as much as we do at University of Helsinki. These observations have led us to fruitful discussions and further development.

Students have been sometimes laughing when I have been telling them that they are my highest authority in learning design. We are eager to find out if we have managed to create truly engaging learning experiences for them. Students are always brutally honest and that’s the fuel for our product development.

Image: Pilot testing with environmental committee of the Student Union HYY

February 24, 2023

Why VR for education?

When considering if a new emerging technology, such as virtual reality (VR), would be a right tool to use in a certain educational situation, one should always think about the specific need.

People usually refer to virtual reality (VR) as a 3D environment that is experienced with the VR headset. It can also be understood as a virtual gamified learning environment, a simulation or 360 content that can be used with the laptop or mobile device. According to Helsinki XR Center´s good glossary and definitions:

VR can mimic reality or be something totally different.

Sometimes other type of media like a video is more powerful, sometimes not. To sum up when VR could be used, teachers could think about the following. If something is not possible in the classroom or with traditional EdTech and online learning tools, then maybe that is possible in VR because:

VR can make impossible possible.

Here is a list of some of the identified benefits of virtual reality as a learning technology:

You can travel in time, back and forth. This allows learners to be uniquely immersed in different kinds of future scenarios too.
You can travel in place. A teacher can take the class into space or they can live someone else´s life on the other side of the world.
You can travel in size. A learner can make big things small and vice versa. It is possible to observe the objects that otherwise would be impossible, like travel inside a cell or a volcano.
The complex cause-and-effect relations are easier to understand when seeing the consequences in front of you. What a learner does in VR is affecting to the end result.
You can change the perspective and learn empathy. Probably one of the most important benefits of VR is the possibility to see the world from someone else´s eyes. When you imagine the world from another person´s point of view, the gap between oneself and the other decreases and the other becomes more “self like”. This way, VR helps to avoid stereotypes and false or comforting narratives. The research has found out that VR experiences in perspective-taking are especially powerful for people who in general have a hard time feeling concern for others and be empathetic. (Bailenson, 2018)
You can explore your identity. Immersion is important in identity exploration because virtual identity doesn´t need to worry about the physical attributes such as gender, race, and disabilities. (Slater, 2009 in Dede et al, 2019). In a virtual world, you can be anyone.

A learning theory that is often referred in relation to VR is situated learning or transferability. Transferability is also one of the key learning design principles defined by OECD (2018). Higher priority should be given to knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values that can be learned in one context and transferred to others. A major criticism of instruction today is the low rate of transfer. Even high performing students often are unable to apply what they have learned in the class to similar real-world contexts (Dede et al, 2019). With virtual reality it is easier to create authentic learning experiences and simulations that feel like real.

When thinking about the virtual reality and other immersive tools as an educational technology, a teacher can think about the use cases through the following questions:

What is the most difficult thing to teach?
What is expensive?
What needs to be scaled?
What is the most important thing to teach?

VR applications are perfect tools for immersive experiences. Immersion is described as the mental state of being completely engaged with something. When learners have a safe space where they can explore things and try if their strategies are efficient, they can take more risks too. When being fully immersed in the virtual world, learners can be so motivated to learn more and are interacting with the content even deeper so that they can even reach the “flow”. That means that they can lose everything else around, even their sense of time (Csikszenthmihalyi, 2014). The educators can also think about the level of immersion they are aiming at – we also have great semi-immersive environments to use like 360 pictures or videos.

We encourage teachers to test and try the possibilities of virtual reality in education. We are excited to hear the use cases you have found and are happy help the teachers at the University of Helsinki to experiment different kind of virtual technologies.

References:

Bailenson, J. (2008). Experience on Demand. What Virtual Reality Is, How It Works, and What It Can Do.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). Flow and the foundations of positive psychology.
Dede, C. G. (2019). Designing immersive authentic simulations that enhance motivation and learning: EcoLearn. In R. Feldman (Ed.), Learning science: Theory, research, practice. (pp. 229-259). New York: McGraw Hill.
OECD. (2018). The Future of Education and Skills. Education 2030.
Slater, M. (2009). Place Illusion and Plausibility can lead to realistic behaviour in immersive virtual environments. Philos Trans R Soc Lond, 364, 3549‐3557.

January 19, 2023January 20, 2023

Exploring the Potential of VR in Group Work

Virtual avatars sitting in a virtual meeting room

The multi-disciplinary sustainability course at the University of Helsinki tested an alternative way of completing the project work using virtual reality (VR) technology. Students were given the opportunity to use Oculus2 virtual glasses in Meta’s Horizon Workroom application for group meetings where they planned their own course presentation. The goal of the experiment was to evaluate the usability and ease of use of the devices and the efficiency of working in virtual space.

The experiment was part of the University of Helsinki’s Global Campus project, led by EdTech Expert Jussi Wright. The teacher responsible for the course was the university lecturer Rami Ratvio from HELSUS. From the tested alternatives, Meta’s Horizon Workroom application was chosen for the actual use test. The program was chosen in part because of the features and its more limited ability to move, which helped to focus on meeting work instead of moving around in free space.

The students who participated in the experiment generally enjoyed the experience and found working in VR mode to be beneficial. The feeling of presence in the virtual meeting was considered to be better than in traditional video meetings, and the meeting atmosphere was felt to be more intense. However, the use of the VR glasses and the program were considered challenging at first, and it was suggested that there should be more time allocated for practice before the course begins.

The Horizon Workroom application also allows for recording meetings, sharing text and image files, and even has the option for one student to act as the organizer and update the agenda on the virtual meeting room’s wall. It’s the perfect blend of technology and organization to enhance the learning experience.

Overall, this experiment demonstrated the potential of VR technology in group work and highlighted the importance of preparing students before using such technology in class. With the right tools and training, VR technology can be a powerful tool to enhance the learning experience, collaboration and improve group work outcomes.

January 16, 2023

Welcome to the Global Campus blog!

In this blog we will share what´s going on in the EdTech development at the University of Helsinki. We´ll tell what we have done – what we tested and what we learned.

The Global campus project was launched by the rector of the University of Helsinki in 2022 to work for two goals: expanding international online learning opportunities and creating a platform for innovative EdTech experiments. The project is said to be a startup inside the university, and it is being given the freedom to do “risky” EdTech pilots. This is an opportunity to think big and boldly about how the online learning can look like in the future. For this work, the team is taking the best out of the newest technologies like extended reality (XR) and artificial intelligence (AI) and combining them with the latest research on digital learning.

The rector Sari Lindblom encouraged the team by saying:

“We realize that not all experiments succeed, but if we never dare to try bold things and take risks, we will never learn as an organization.”

This inspires us every day to think big, and to challenge the way we think about learning. We welcome all teachers and students to join us in redefining online learning at the University of Helsinki!