Immersive and engaging content creation with 360° images. Lessons learned from the design and development of a Virtual Field Experience.

Acquiring the skills to create interactive, immersive content with emerging technologies is no small feat. One Instructional Designer will detail their experience using 360° images and 3D models to create a Virtual Field Experience (VFE) in a collaboration between the Geoscience and Education departments.

This joint effort attempted to address the ongoing issue of contending with weather and other disruptions to visiting Rock Bridge Memorial State Park as a field trip in undergraduate Geology courses. The result concluded in the development of a VFE built with a suite of tools - Canvas, Storyline, and ThingLink. The goal of the VFE was to design a learning experience that provided the lower-level knowledge gained from the in-person field trip to the park, but also exposed learners to higher-order learning objectives, thus enhancing the experience. The design focused on ways to engage learners with upfront goals and activities using interactive 360° images. 

Undergraduate students from spring 2022 in a large introductory Geology course completed the VFE embedded in Canvas. They experienced it as an exploratory scavenger hunt with interactive game elements and assessments embedded along the way. Game elements include collecting fossils, level-ups, and collecting gems to gain access to bonus material. Assessments aligned with the learning objectives include: 1)  identifying what a fossil is and its importance to the host rock, 2) recognizing how different rock types react to dissolution, and 3) placing geological events in chronological order.

One of the many challenges of this project was to incorporate a higher-order assessment within an interactive 360° environment. Careful consideration of all the pieces involved was made as well as a thorough assessment of the software available. There are commercially available tools to create interactive immersive content that do not provide an adequate means of assessment. Tools that provide better assessments, on the other hand, do not incorporate immersive features. The presenter will discuss an attempt at integrating higher-order assessment and demonstrate how to seamlessly integrate both Articulate Storyline and ThingLInk to overcome the limitations of each tool. 

To demonstrate the VFE from an end user’s perspective, the presenter will host a Let’s Play session and hand over the controls to audience members who will play as if they were students on a field trip. The rest of the audience will help guide the exploration and identify the different objectives within the activities and how these objectives are measured. 

The presenter will also demonstrate how to create immersive elements using Articulate Storyline and ThingLink, including how to:

• use a cell phone to take a 360° photo

• add interactions to 360° images

• and incorporate assessments

 Finally, the presenter will discuss a few challenges and potential solutions, such as:

• the limitations of 360° photos

• project management

• quality control

Level of Participation:
Attendees will be able to earn the title of Junior Geologist Field Assistant by tackling challenges in the Virtual Field Experience (VFE). Audience members will compete to take turns at the controls and explore the VFE for several minutes each. During these explorations, the rest of the audience will watch and provide suggestions to the controller to complete game tasks, do a scavenger hunt and answer assessment questions embedded in the VFE. An open-ended discussion will follow.

During the session, attendees will use their mobile devices to take a 360° photo and learn how to add interaction.

Session Goals:
Individuals attending this session will be able to recognize the opportunities, challenges, solutions, and limitations of creating immersive and engaging educational content using 360° images. They will learn practical tips to design and develop their own immersive content.