by Zac Woolfitt, Inholland University, The Netherlands.
On Thursday 20th February, Media and Learning ran its annual virtual tour of immersive learning spaces.
This report covers two facilities presented
- Leeds University Innovation Centre – HELIX
- Inholland University of Applied Sciences – Immersive room & new building
As a member of the Media and Learning advisory board, this was the fourth virtual tour I’ve been involved in moderating. See reports from previous tours: February 2024, March 2023 and March 2022. Attendees for the webinar were enrolled from 29 countries. Around 40 attendees were online at any given moment (with a maximum of about 70). Job titles included Educational Specialists, Teachers, Researchers, Centers of Teaching and Learning, librarians, consultants and innovation managers.
In a poll they told us reasons to attend the virtual tour were ‘Exploring new trends in educational facilities’, ‘Gaining inspiration for new teaching practices’ and ‘Understanding how technology can enhance learning-spaces’. The biggest challenges they faced in designing and implementing innovative learning spaces were ‘Budget’, ‘Faculty adoption and training’ and ‘Technological limitations’
Leeds University Innovation Centre – HELIX
| HELIX at University of Leeds – multiple flexible and immersive learning spaces |
Chris Thompson of the University of Leeds gave us a tour of their HELIX facility. It is a multi-use space for innovation in learning and teaching and provides a dedicated space for students, academic staff, professional services, and local industry partners to collaborate on innovative and entrepreneurial projects.
It opened in September 2023 after five years of planning and an investment of around 2.3 million pounds. The HELIX is located in a historical building that has been completely renovated inside. It has immersive technology spaces, multimedia production studios including several podcast studios, a physical makerspace and a very cool mobile floor for VR (more on that later).
The facility is open to students and staff (they have registered 3400 users since it opened). It is also open to the wider local community and public, without a sign-in. Examples of recent use cases here. They have an area for start-ups, where locals, teachers and students can mingle and share ideas in a creative open ecosystem. This support helps the community create.
The space is designed to be an open and integrated environment so that interactions and exchange of ideas can happen fluidly. This layout allows for more informal exchange of ideas than in a regular learning context.
Chris explained their principles for success: Community first, Student Participation, Wellbeing, Health and Safety, Frictionless Access, Empowered Collaborations, and an Expert Team. Chris toured us round the facility, livestreaming as he guided us. It was good to see how many of the rooms were in use (two studios were recording podcasts, the maker space had a lesson, and one of the rooms with large, curved screens for 3d modelling, was being used by a group.
| Omni deck for VR experiences |
We saw the Omnideck (the first one in the UK). This is a large 360 degree tread mill with rollers, so the ground movers with you. It is surrounded by a restraining wall. VR users stand in the middle, and are secured in a safety harness, and can literally ‘run’ through the VR world. Chris mentioned some pilots they are running. I can imagine the intensity of the learning experience would be very high indeed. Super cool and I’d love to try it out one day.
The Enterprise Hub is at the entrance to HELIX and is where staff and students who are developing a business idea can co-create. They can build and test prototypes, exchange expertise with a community of likeminded individuals. A practical Need/Wanted board by the coffee machine encourages exchange and sharing of information.
Training users
There is a lot of expensive and complex equipment, which is basically open to the public. So the HELIX has training courses where you can learn to use the 3d printer, screen printing, maker space, podcast studios and other technical equipment. They have a series of Cue Cards that explain the different technology in the space.
The classrooms in the middle of the HELIX have flexible furniture, they do not have a fixed direction, so you can set it up as you wish. This enables teaching in innovative, and genuinely interactive learning spaces.
| Open classrooms don’t face in any direction so you are free to be creative |
Students are involved in designing table top games, printing textiles, Lego serious play and using the 3d printer. The recording studios have been used to create contact for their online masters programmes. They provide this service to all seven faculties at the university
What caught my attention was the how the space is offered as an open environment where everyone (including locals) are welcome to come in and create together. Inspiring!
Inholland University of Applied Sciences – Immersive room & new building
| Inholland Amsterdam campus (image from CEPEZED architects and lobby |
For the second part of the virtual tour, we walked through the Inholland lobby and visited the immersive room. My Inholland colleagues Nico Grijpink and Rinke van Zanden from the Media Technology team filmed and presented the tour of the immersive space.
| The Immersive Room at Inholland (Slide from Jeroen Bottema – M&L presentation in November) |
Technical set-up
The immersive room is operated from an adjacent studio, behind glass. The room itself has large screens on three walls, with three projectors on the ceiling. Multiple microphones provide good sound quality inside the room. There are also cameras at different positions so the room can be used to be immersive, but also to record and live stream what happens in the room. The screens can be operated with touch sensitive screens when your finger ‘breaks’ the laser screen that runs from the floor to the ceiling. The room is quiet, carpeted and comfortable, though it gets warm pretty quickly.
In the last few months, the immersive room has been actively used for nursing classes, including complex mental health care and technical nursing role plays. The Finance program has also used the space to introduce working with dashboards in the Finance program.
Using the space invites imagination and vision from the lecturers and course designers. Creating additional realistic scenarios to practice role playing scenarios seems a good use. In the tourism course, teachers dressed as hotel managers currently sit in an regular classroom and role play interviews with tourism students dressed as hotel staff. This is part of an assessment and training. Setting this in a ‘realistic hotel environment’ in the immersive room could greatly increase the learning experience.
Other uses have included first-aid training for Inholland staff. An unwell person lies on the floor, and a relevant background is projected onto the three walls. The session can be recorded and reflected on.
And there are fun uses too. Recently I joined a 30 minutes ‘underwater’ meditation session led by my colleague Natalie van Gils focusing on breathing and heart rhythms, including gentle music and relaxing fragrances being wafted into the room. Let’s just say I would have been glad to stay on the beanbag a lot longer!
| Beanbags and music at the ‘underwater’ meditation session in the immersive room |
Additionally, we are collaborating with other educational institutions who have shown interest. The software to wrap PowerPoint slides around the three screens should be installed soon.
Immersive challenges
Scheduling, booking, and running the space is currently complex. Challenges include making sure teachers know what the options and potential are, facilitating them time to create and develop content and modules, and then staffing the space with trained operators. It is not yet a one button studio. We are just getting going and during the webinar, we all got many ideas on how to take this space further and enhance the quality and depth of the learning experiences at Inholland.
New Inholland Campus
The media and learning virtual tour was a good opportunity to share the new Inholland campus with the media and learning community. When I started working at Inholland in 2003, there was already mention of the ‘new building’ in Amsterdam. Although it took a while, I was very glad when we finally moved into our new building in September 2024. It is located 10 minutes from Amsterdam Central Station.
See the CEPEZED site of the architect including information about sustainable design and educational vision. Or see the 360 photos inside the building.
| Our green roof, flexible classroom furniture, class with a view, laboratories, and games room |
Does the new Inholland building work?
In my opinion, yes! One of my favourite features of the new building is the ease with which you can change the layout of the classroom quickly, and silently. With 30 students, it took only 60 seconds to completely reconfigure the learning space (See the demo film I made here).
We did not feature this in the tour, but worth a mention is the escape room, built by colleague Nick Dekker. This spaces uses different types of technology and media to work on team building. In April, 200 first year students will go through this room in their teams. There are unexpected activities and things that happen (no spoiler here). Response from students who have complete it are very positive. See my report here.
Over the last few years, I had the chance to give some input to the pedagogical functions of the new building. Overall, I’m very pleased with how things have worked out. Particularly the amount of interaction encouraged by the open stairs and atrium. You can see where colleagues are.
It’s a state of the art higher education building (with great views!) and plenty of flexible facilities. There is lots of glass, which I like, but some teachers feel leaves them and their teaching quite ‘exposed’ to those passing by. What it does not have is lots of large lecture theatres with fixed seats! The multiple flexible learning spaces, greenscreen and podcasting facilities, maker space, modern laboratories and free coffee make for a good place to work and learn.
Reflection on the webinar
It was a well-organieed webinar with lots of good interaction. After Leeds and Inholland had both presented, we had a good discussion and answered questions from the webinar attendees. There seemed to be a lot of knowledge already in the audience and the many ideas suggested inspired us further.
Arranging this webinar, with two livestream tours at two locations, along with hosting a discussion, was certainly complicated and taxed the cognitive load of all those presenting However, we received positive feedback from those attending:
‘Live tours in spaces being used was fascinating!’,
‘The energy and openness of presenters – this really showed how much they believe in their work and environments shown. The event was very well facilitated.’
‘Loved the tours and excellent presentations. I could tell that love was present in what everyone is doing. You are leaders in a brave new world. Keep going! You are an inspiration.’,
Thanks to all involved and see you at the next session.
Finally
Thank you for reading this far. Comments, suggestions, or corrections, please contact me directly at zac.woolfitt@inholland.nl.
Author
Zac Woolfitt, lecturer and researcher, Inholland University in the Netherlands
Editor’s note: This article appeared first on Zac’s blog which you can check-out here.
