Experiencing cultures around the world through virtual reality

Situated forms of experiential learning, such as fieldtrips and site visits, are effective in exposing students to direct experiences and bridging the gap between theory and practice (Schott, 2017). Despite their benefits, off-campus activities are difficult for educators to organise and for students to access. But, this is where Virtual Reality (VR) technologies can be indispensable. VR offers convenient, low-environmental footprint alternatives to situated experiences (Schott and Marshall, 2018) and provides opportunities to facilitate tasks that would otherwise be impracticable (Dalgarno and Lee, 2009).

Prof Adrian Hearn and Elisabetta Ferrari from the School of Languages and Linguistics have used VR in their teaching since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. With the help of the Faculty’s eTeaching team and other colleagues, they both designed virtual travel and cultural experiences for their students.

Stepping into Italian history and culture through VR

Elisabetta Ferrari, Lecturer in Italian Studies, wanted her students to travel back in time to experience two distinct periods of Italian history. To bring this idea to life, Elisabetta teamed up with Mitch Buzza from the Faculty’s eTeaching team and experimented with VR and interactive video technologies. The outcome: two VR experiences that engage students’ curiosity and present opportunities for critical reflection on Italian culture and history.

The first experience – Dal Foro Romano al Foro Italico (From the Roman Forum to the Foro Italico) – is a non-immersive 360-degree video of two historically and architecturally significant areas of Rome. Accessible via computer or tablet, the interactive video tour takes students to the EUR district and the Foro Italico complex – two areas of Rome developed during the Fascist dictatorship. Through a blend of Google Earth images, music and audio narration, the interactive experience illustrates the propagandistic intent behind these urban spaces, as well as their fusion of rationalist and Ancient Roman architectural styles.

Conceived during COVID-19 lockdowns, the project relied on Mitch Buzza’s technical expertise to make the most of existing media assets, such as Google Earth drone footage of the Roman cityscape. Using the H5P interactive video tool, Mitch crafted a five-minute video that students can pause at five different points to interact with contextual resources, such as 2D videos and academic articles. Available in either English or Italian, these resources give students the tools to conceptualise their virtual tour experience.

Encouraged by the positive response from students, Elisabetta and Mitch continued to explore teaching applications of VR technology. What emerged from these experimentations is La Spedizione dei Mille (The Expedition of the Thousand), an immersive VR adventure.  As they put on the VR headsets, students join Giuseppe Garibaldi and his volunteers on the Expedition of the Thousand, which eventually led to the Unification of Italy in 1861. The immersive historical reconstruction is divided into two parts, each about seven to eight minutes long. The first part reconstructs the sea voyage from Genoa to Sicily, while the second part captures the subsequent journey by land to Teano, near Rome. The journey by land and sea is interspersed with immersive gallery spaces showcasing paintings, maps, military relics and other artefacts from the period, along with a video installation. To add authenticity to the experience, the video includes audio narration of diary excerpts of three expedition participants, music and background sound effects.

Suns of Mercury produced the soundtrack, Gavin Nebauer from the Horwood Recording Studio engineered and edited the sound, and colleagues from the School of Languages and Linguistics recorded the voiceover narration.  With their support, Elisabetta and Mitch produced an English and Italian version of the experience.Availability in both languages makes the immersive video accessible to students at different levels of study. Consequently, Elisabetta has embedded the La Spedizione dei Mille experience in ITAL10002/20008 Italian 4and ITAL20001 Italian Cultural Studies B subjects.

In the first two weeks of the semester, students explore this historical period through a close analysis of the expedition’s diaries and official paintings and images. The VR experience in Week 3 contextualises the artefact analysis, allowing students to visualise and fully grasp the concepts they have studied. This is then followed by a structured class discussion where students consider ideas of nationality and identity formation and reflect on the forces that shaped this complex historical period.

In the video below, Elisabetta reflects on the positive effects these VR experiences have had on student engagement.

Experiencing nature as a living being

In 2019, Prof Adrian Hearn set out to explore humanity’s relationship with nature. Guided by local community elders, Adrian travelled to sacred sites in Mexico, Cuba and Australia. On these travels, he was stunned that while the elders related to nature in ways specific to their culture, all of them challenged his question – ‘what does nature mean to you?’. For them, nature was not a ‘what’ but a ‘who’, a living being.

The interactive film ‘Who is nature?’ brings this perspective to the classroom of POLS90024 Latin America in the World and  Exploring Latin America (SPAN30021).The film is a collection of 360-degree footage from Adrian’s travels. It captures Cenote Tsukán – an underground lake in Mexico’s Yucatán state, Bosque de La Habana Park in Cuba’s capital Havana and follows the path of the Aboriginal Dreamtime serpent Beemarra along the Murchison River in Western Australia. Dr Steven Kelly, a Nanda descendent, narrates the Beemarra story in the film’s climactic moments.

The film was a collaborative effort. Adrian shared his initial ideas with the Faculty’s eTeaching team, led by Meredith Hinze. Mitch Buzza, the team’s support coordinator, created the early prototype version and added interactive ‘hotspot’ buttons to the later immersive iterations of the film. These interactive elements allowed students to watch 2D video interviews with specialists, read additional texts and explore maps of sacred sites, all within the immersive experience.

Luis Gaitán and Auryn Rotten, video producers from Learning Environments, also made significant contributions. Luis produced the video interviews with specialists, while Auryn assembled various pieces of footage from Adrian’s travels to create the visual composition of the film. Sound was another critical element. Produced by Daniel Jauregui from Harmonic Whale Studios, the film’s soundtrack added another layer of immersion to the overall experience.

In its teaching applications, the film initially became an opportunity for students to travel while unable to leave their house, let alone Melbourne, during the COVID-19 lockdowns. But, beyond the virtual travel, the film opens a window into local Indigenous perspectives on environment in POLS90024 Latin America in the World. Adrian uses the film in Week 11 of the subject. Having explored environmental issues from macro and international relations perspectives earlier in the semester, Week 11 hones in on the local perceptions. In this context, ‘Who is nature?’ is the opportunity for students to experience Indigenous and Afro-Caribbean relationships with nature and reflect on the dominant extractivist attitudes that tend to guide policy decisions.

In the classroom, students are put into four groups. The student groups move along four different stations where they engage with different multimedia resources before reflecting on their experiences at the end of the class. In the video below, Prof Adrian Hearn explains how the ‘Who’s nature?’ film is used in the class alongside other interactive multimedia resources.

References

Dalgarno, B., and Lee, M. J. W. (2010). What are the learning affordances of 3-D virtual environments? British Journal of Educational Technology, 41(1), 10–32.

Schott, C. (2017). Virtual fieldtrips and climate change education for tourism students. Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism Education, 21(A), 13-22.

Schott, C. and Marshall, S. (2018). Virtual reality and situated experiential education: a conceptualization and exploratory trial. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 34(6), 843-852.