{"id":5950,"date":"2020-03-02T18:41:45","date_gmt":"2020-03-02T18:41:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/media-and-learning.eu\/?p=5950"},"modified":"2020-03-02T18:41:48","modified_gmt":"2020-03-02T18:41:48","slug":"holographic-speculation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/media-and-learning.eu\/type\/featured-articles\/holographic-speculation\/","title":{"rendered":"Holographic Speculation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Senior Educational Technologist Dominic Pates looks to a holographic future for higher education, finding a blooming of possibilities and a similar range of challenges.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes, just asking the right question\nat the right time can lead to so much more than just the answer sought. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A conversation I once had with an academic at\nCity, University of London (City) in 2014, on the interface between AV\ntechnologies and the physical environment, was a lot more formative on the\nlater direction of my work than I could possibly have imagined at the time. In\na learning spaces drop-in session, she asked me if it was possible to bring a remote\nguest speaker into a class, having become used to chatting with sectoral colleagues\nvia Skype in her office and wanting to be able to recreate this approach with her\nstudents in a seminar. I recalled all the clunky web conference calls I\u2019d\nwitnessed in the workplace prior to then, and considered that while it would be\ntechnically possible, it would likely be pretty disruptive as a learning\nexperience. I imagined a future scenario, when the technology was sufficiently\nadvanced and it could be made to feel as if the guest speaker were there in the\nroom, where life-sized holograms could take the place of a wall-mounted web\nconferencing system and the final barrier between the distant and the\nco-located would appear as if fully removed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fast forward to February 2020, and I\u2019ve delivered my third version of a workshop titled \u2018The Holographic Academic\u2019 at ISE in Amsterdam, the world\u2019s largest AV show. The workshop, which introduces participants to the possibilities of holographic projection in higher education and asks them to consider the potential benefits and challenges that this might bring, accompanies a chapter I\u2019ve just had published in a new Springer book titled \u2018Emerging Technologies and Pedagogies in the Curriculum\u2019. This is done via a series of \u2018What If\u2019 questions, designed as prompts for participants to imagine a range of possible futures. These prompts include such scenarios as academics being asked to deliver a lecture holographically at short notice, a university perfecting a technique for creating interactive holographic likenesses of long-dead experts, Extinction Rebellion stopping local academics from flying to major international conferences, and the creation of a global network of holographic projection centres with access to all faculty at major educational establishments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The workshop has now been attended by\nroughly 150 people across three events, and it has been fascinating to see the kinds\nof ideas that participants have generated about the potential of holograms in\neducational contexts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the Association for Learning Technology 2019 conference in Edinburgh, we heard about a holographic Brian Cox appearing as a guest Physics lecturer, questions about how to measure student engagement, and whether an \u2018MC\u2019 would be needed in lectures to keep things moving. The likely enduring feature of a new version of the \u2018sage on the stage\u2019 came up, as did perceived environmental benefits of reducing academic travel, and the complexity of the technical infrastructure needed to link up a network of holographic centres. We also heard about a need for changing the design of lecture theatres, of reducing learning to \u2018edutainment\u2019, and the challenges of handling pastoral care holographically. We even saw the production of a draft \u2018holo-quette\u2019 guide, with an outline for recommended behavioural guidelines for this brave new educational method.<\/p>\n\n\n