Extended reality in teaching

As extended reality is particularly well suited to enabling users to quickly grasp complex relationships, XR technologies can be used efficiently and effectively in teaching applications and courses.

In the project "Extended Reality (XR) in Teaching" (March 2022 to February 2023), the XR toolbox was developed to support teaching on the topic of Extended Reality (XR) in the Faculty of Information Technology. The didactic concept of the course Extended Reality (XR) in the study programs Biomedical Engineering and Information Technology (formerly Digital Technologies) focuses on an experience-oriented and project-oriented teaching of the course content with the help of XR technologies: Teaching Extended Reality with the help of Extended Reality.

The course content is taught through a mixture of seminar-style lectures, practical exercises and communicative elements. All students receive a virtual reality (VR) headset and a webcam on loan. This allows them to experience the perceptual effects in the virtual world and try out the finished XR applications. Afterwards, the students reflect and discuss the experience in depth with the lecturer. The students also develop their own XR application using the XR toolbox as a construction kit.

The specially developed XR toolbox includes German instructions for getting started with XR development using the game engine from Unity Technologies (Unity game engine) as well as introductory videos in German. Special XR applications are used for demonstration purposes and as a basis for student projects. The XR toolbox can be downloaded via the state portal ORCA.nrw as freely usable learning material (Open Educational Resources, OER). This means that the content is available under a license that enables the free use and further development of the materials and applications.

The results of testing this didactic concept in a Bachelor's course in the winter semester 2022/2023 can be summarized as follows The students were highly motivated by the project. They were able to reproduce learning content better after an experience with the help of an XR application from the XR toolbox than content that was only taught theoretically. The results of the teaching evaluation and the feedback to the lecturer were very positive and the course was rated as recommendable by the students. The quality of the projects developed by the students themselves was very high.