- Over the course of two weeks, 360º recordings have been made in the various spaces of the iTEAM Immersive Communications Laboratory.
Virtual Reality is one of the most impactful immersive technologies within academic environments. Its use in training sessions, practical classes, and as a solution to introduce students to immersive environments, allowing them to engage in real-world practice without needing to be physically in the laboratory, makes this technology a highly attractive teaching resource for incorporation into current teaching methodologies.
The project “Metaverse Applied to University Teaching to Evaluate Academic Success” aims to assess the use of 360º spherical videos in the learning of practicals within current engineering degrees. It is funded by FUAX-Santander (Fundación Universidad Alfonso X El Sabio and Santander Universidades) and was developed during 2023 at UAX by Principal Investigator Esther Guervós Sánchez and the UAX VR research group.
To achieve this, 360º video recordings are proposed, where teachers of practical classes in laboratories across different engineering degrees explain the practical sessions and the use and functioning of the laboratory. The use of virtual reality in academic practicals offers students the opportunity to observe and repeat the sessions as many times as needed. This technology not only improves understanding of the content but also allows students to study at their own pace and at any time of day.
360º video recordings are unique in terms of image capture. These cameras are equipped with two wide-angle lenses positioned opposite each other to record both the front and back of a space, with the wide-angle lenses capturing the sides. The camera generates two identical spheres with the two parts of the recorded space. Then, through a process called “stitching,” the two spheres are “stitched” together, placing the viewer’s perspective at the center of the resulting sphere. This process constructs the immersive environment characteristic of 360º recordings, in which students can attend practical classes as many times as they like from the comfort of their homes using VR devices like virtual reality headsets.
Professor Esther Guervós Sánchez, from the School of Engineering (EPS) at UAX (Universidad Alfonso X el Sabio), is responsible for carrying out the project. Thanks to the Mobility Grant from the XV CALL FOR SCIENTIFIC MOBILITY GRANTS for UAX/FUAX 2024 Researchers, she secured a stay at iTEAM: iTEAM | Institute of Telecommunications and Multimedia Applications | UPV at the UPV: Universitat Politècnica de València from July 8 to 19, 2024, invited by David Gómez-Barquero, iTEAM Deputy Director and Head of the Immersive Communications Laboratory, where 360º recordings were made to showcase the spaces and technologies that make up the lab.
The activities carried out during researcher Esther Guervós Sánchez’s stay were as follows: creation and editing of immersive educational VR (virtual reality) content; inclusion of prototypes in an immersive platform designed as a permanent demonstrator, which allows new educational content related to university environments to be uploaded and managed for viewing; tests on the UPV campus using the Private 5G infrastructure to validate the real feasibility of immersive content using the available infrastructure at the iTEAM immersive communications laboratory; and collaboration with iTEAM researchers, who are committed to scientific excellence and the transfer of knowledge to society, universities, and industry.