360° video in education

360° is mainly known for its presence within the world of gaming and hobbies, but also within education there are opportunities to be grasped. In fact, 360° video offers the opportunity to create a realistic representation of reality, giving you the opportunity to focus on authentic education.

Think for example of field trips, where it is no longer necessary to travel with the entire class to a certain location. The teacher/ cameraman can record a 360° video of the location once, after which it can be reused indefinitely. Students do not even need to be at school to experience this field trip, since it is possible to watch this content from home.

Also the learning of representative professional tasks can be properly and gradually modelled in a 360° video by an expert. For example, it is not possible to stand in an electricity booth with 25 students and an electrician, while it is possible to record the expert behaviour of the electrician in 360° video. This gives all students the opportunity to analyze the expert behavior. Connections in the execution of procedures and processes can also be demonstrated visually. Suppose the electrician closes a circuit on the left side of the electricity booth, suddenly a lamp starts to light up on the right side of the electricity booth. This makes the relationship between cause (closing the circuit) and effect (the lamp turns on) immediately clear. In addition, it is possible to film multiple and different electricity booths that look different, for example, making it possible to stimulate the transfer of knowledge.

The list of learning opportunities and possibilities of 360° video in education can continue, but there is still a lack of pedagogical/ didactic foundation and enrichment to really speak of a 360° video lesson. Offering 360° videos can be effective in certain situations (guided tour, introduction to new environment, etc), but is not enough to speak of a learning process. From a pedagogical/ didactic point of view, there is a need to enrich the 360° video with instructions that are effective, efficient and engaging for the student with the possibility of scaffolding (Merril, 2002)[1], procedural information offered just-in-time (Van Merriënboer & Kirschner, 2013)[2], and personalization to the authentic environment by offering freedom and choice to the student (Kearney et al. 2012)[3], ….

Based on this need, the PXL University of Applied Sciences decided to design its own software ‘Vivista’, which makes these pedagogical/ didactic enrichments possible.

[1] Merril, L D. (2002). First principles of instruction: Educational Technology Research and Development, 50(3), 43-49. doi: 10.1007/BF02505024

[2] Van Merriënboer, J. J. & Kirschner, A. (2013). Ten steps to complex learning: a systematic approach to four component instructional design. New York: Routledge

[3] Kearney, M., Aubusson, P., Schuck, S. & Burden, K. (2012). Viewing Mobile Learning from a Pedagogical Perspective. ALT-J Research in Learning Technology. Vol. 20.