This project explores the use of immersive technology to enhance knowledge exchange within educational and industry contexts. It focuses on two key activities at the University of Winchester: applicant open-day events and a digital well-being conference.
Project Overview
This study examines the use of virtual reality for knowledge exchange in educational and industry contexts. The effectiveness of VR in fostering collaboration, creativity, and innovation was highlighted through Applicant Open Day Sessions and the Digital Well-being Conference. The study emphasises the need to prepare stakeholders for the growing importance of advancing technology. Furthermore, it aims to explore the impact of knowledge exchange in practice-based research to facilitate ongoing collaboration and address challenges in Extended Reality content creation.
Project Goals
Engage Prospective Students and Staff: Introduce Virtual Reality (VR) to foster interest and understanding.
Promote Digital Well-being: Use VR to explore themes like mindfulness and well-being.
Foster Collaboration: Encourage partnerships between students, staff, and industry professionals.
Key Activities
Objectives:
- Conduct VR workshops using the Engage Spatial platform.
- Improve understanding of VR technology among prospective students.
- Gather feedback through pre- and post-event discussions.
Details: Workshops included personalising avatars, virtual fashion shows, and demonstrations of VR-created environments. The stakeholders involved were prospective students, academic staff, and course champions.
Digital Well-being Conference
Objectives:
- Showcase VR applications in promoting digital health and well-being.
- Establish research collaborations.
- Involve students in creating VR experiences as part of an MA module.
Details: Participants explored VR environments focused on the Five Steps to Digital Well-being. The event included interactive workshops and demonstrations, fostering collaboration among university staff, health professionals, and students.
Context Within Ph.D. Research and Knowledge Exchange (RKE)
Designing XR Training Resources to Overcome Adoption Barriers and Foster Collaboration between Education and SMEs
The central theme of this research is to design and establish training resources for creating educational and consumer experiences using Extended Reality (XR) authoring tools. This addresses significant barriers to adopting such technologies, particularly for novice users and small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Barriers include cost, lack of design guidelines, insufficient technical support, and limited knowledge of XR technologies (Idrees, Morton, & Dabrowski, 2022; Bennett & Murphy, 2020).
There is a need for training and support for educators, students, and industry professionals. Additionally, there is an opportunity to strengthen the bridge between educational institutions and SME communities by focusing on collaborative and iterative engagement. This co-creation process involves deploying academic research with industry-relevant XR experiences and providing access to the latest content creation tools and resources, preparing stakeholders for a future where XR knowledge and abilities will become increasingly vital (Naik, Barbosa and Swartsel, 2023). Promoting resilience and engagement ensures they adapt and succeed in a rapidly advancing technological environment.
Aims and Objectives
The principles of the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) highlight the importance of understanding your audience, aligning engagement methods with purpose, and ensuring thorough evaluation to inform and assess the value of dissemination (2023). Recognising the need to avoid solely creating resources for one audience type, it is essential to employ a holistic view, ensuring that research processes follow a human-centred approach, actively involving and impacting diverse stakeholders in the co-production process.
Applicant Open Day Sessions
Aims:
- Engage prospective students and academic staff in a VR experience to foster interest and understanding of immersive technology.
- Demonstrate the practical applications of VR in educational and industry contexts.
Objectives:
- Conduct VR workshops within Engage VR over two afternoons.
- Achieve a noticeable improvement in prospective students’ understanding of VR technology, assessed through pre- and post-event discussions and feedback.
- Collect feedback from participants through written and verbal forms.
Applicant Open Day Sessions
Aims:
- Explore and demonstrate the applications of VR technology in promoting digital health and well-being.
- Foster collaboration between university staff, health professionals, students, and industry partners in creating content and utilising VR for well-being.
Objectives:
- Conduct interactive workshops and demonstrations to showcase the potential applications of VR in health and well-being contexts.
- Establish research collaborations between staff, students and industry professionals.
- Engage participants in VR demonstrations and discussions during the conference slot, with a portion reporting intent to apply VR in their practice in post-event feedback.
- Provide hands-on experience by involving students in creating VR experiences as part of an MA module on interaction design
Methodology
Practice-Based Research Methodology for Immersive Technology
This methodology outlines the practice-based research approach applied in two dissemination activities: Applicant Open Day Sessions and Digital Health Well-Being Week. Serving as models of knowledge exchange, both were designed to engage and demonstrate to participants immersive technology applications within educational and industry contexts.
Practice-based Research:
Emphasises the role of creative practice in generating research outcomes. David Gauntlett describes practice-based research as ‘exploration through doing, making, and thinking’ (2024), which aligns well with immersive technology’s innovative and experiential nature. This approach allowed participants to be directly involved in the creative process, facilitating new ideas and fostering innovative thinking and problem-solving by integrating creativity at the core of learning and discovery (Toronto Metropolitan University, 2023). Given these characteristics, methods such as action research, reflective practice, and iterative development were chosen. These methods enabled qualitative data collection through direct observations and feedback, ensuring the research remained grounded in real-world applications and stakeholder experiences.
Action Research with Reflective Practice:
According to Kemmis, McTaggart, and Nixon, action research is conducted through self-reflective cycles, enabling iterative improvements based on practical feedback (2014). As Schön describes (1983, p.311), reflective practice involves thinking about practice before, during and after it occurs. Reflections were used to improve the workshop dissemination activities and to conduct workshops beyond this study, underscoring the ongoing nature of the action research process.
Iterative Development:
This method involves refining VR activities, embracing the cycle of creation, testing, learning, and adjustment rather than following a linear path (Fitz-Patrick, 2023), ensuring continuous improvement and alignment with participant needs and feedback.
Data Collection:
This was primarily qualitative, involving observations during workshops and participant feedback through emails, aligning with methods used in similar studies where direct post-event interviews were not feasible (Vear et al., 2021). Not all audio was transcribed correctly due to spatial sound issues (recorded whilst wearing the headset). Notes were also taken by watching the videos. The analysis focused on identifying patterns and themes related to participant engagement, the effectiveness of VR applications, and the overall impact on knowledge exchange.
Ethical Considerations:
Participants signed up for each dissemination activity with the understanding that they would be using VR headsets, with alternative methods provided for those who might feel uncomfortable (these were not needed). Informed consent was obtained from all participants (signing up with event organisers), ensuring they were aware of the nature of the VR experiences and their role in the study.
Anonymity and Privacy:
Observations were conducted to ensure no data could be traced back to individual participants (using premade accounts with avatars assigned to them). All feedback was anonymised, and no personal data was collected.
Review and Approval: The event organisers reviewed the workshop content, ensuring that it was appropriate for the intended audience.
Findings and Analysis
Planning, Reactions, and Impact
As Kemmis and McTaggart (2014) discussed, planning is an essential stage of the action research iterative cycle. Becoming confident and familiar with using the pre-made and curated assets within the Engage software was vital to the success of both dissemination activities. During this process, it was evident that the university would not support running multiple VR Headsets on the wireless network, requiring each device to connect separately using a staff IT account, and with frequent password changes, there was the need to allocate sufficient time for troubleshooting prior to the workshops. Furthermore, during the applicant open day events, it was clear that having more resources for technical support to run the following workshops would prove helpful. Therefore, the next dissemination activity (Five Steps to Digital Well-being) was incorporated into an MA module on Interaction Design, enabling students to participate in a live client project, collaborate with cross-faculty university staff and other externals (Engage VR meetings), and offer an enriched learning experience. This aligns with the principles of carrying out research knowledge exchange, bridging theory and practice to develop a skilled workforce and boosting research activity in sectors involving research and development (R&D) roles (GOV.UK, 2021).
Participant Reactions:
Participants initially displayed mixed reactions to the VR experiences during both dissemination activities. Most were excited to put on the headsets immediately; some displayed shyness or frustration, and one older participant was rude/aggressive, possibly due to a lack of experience with the technology. However, most enjoyed exploring the virtual spaces, were optimistic about the use of immersive technology and were able to contribute to discussions of use within their respective industries. Additionally, observations revealed that those who were helpful to one another found it easy to navigate the environment, supporting Bandura’s notion (1965 cited in Fryling, Johnston and Hayes, 2011) that people can learn by watching others. Also, Fryling, Johnston, and Hayes’s (2011) highlight factors that can influence responses, such as the user’s history and comfort in new situations. Effects on cognitive load can impact how they interact with the latest technologies and could explain why some participants demonstrated negative behaviour. Thus, a user-centred approach is essential in designing effective public dissemination activities, facilitating diverse backgrounds while immersive technologies are still new for so many.
Experiential Learning and Engagement:
There were successes and challenges in integrating knowledge exchange activities into teaching practice (two students in total). One student engaged positively with the module/project, participating in extracurricular meetings with industry professionals from Engage VR, collaborating across facilities and assisting with running the conference workshops outside of regular teaching hours. Their portfolio submission noted that they enjoyed the collaboration opportunities and the immersive nature of VR environments. This aligns with a survey by VictoryXR, where 96% of instructors found VR use highly successful and 98% effective (VictoryXR, 2023), supporting the idea that experiential, immersive learning can significantly enhance educational outcomes and student engagement.
In contrast, student two’s attendance was low overall, which may account for reflections within their portfolio regarding expectations for the content and the technical aspect of the project. Groth et al. (2020) explain the importance of defining clear roles for successful collaborative research. To bridge the gap between successful and low-engaging students, educators must set clear expectations, provide structures, and ensure careful planning for an inclusive learning environment.
Impact of RKE Activities:
The dissemination activities for this study explored the importance of RKE’s economic, societal, and educational impacts. Economically, the applicant open day events aimed to attract prospective students, increase enrolment and revenue, and encourage innovation. Feedback from all university staff involved was overwhelmingly positive, highlighting the substantial impact on student and external engagement and understanding of XR technologies. Advancing technology has led to new dissemination activities directly involving the public (Ross-Hellauer et al., 2020). This study’s RKE activities encouraged co-creation between the university, industry partners, and conference attendees and contributed to futureproofing skills for all involved.
Looking ahead, the decentralisation and open-sourcing of XR tools will be a focal point of the next phase of this study, ensuring accessibility and supporting diverse learners, institutions and the public (Chen, 2023).
Congratulations on doing such a fab job with so many students. I heard lots of positive comments, and I really saw the impact on the Fashion and Marketing Students, from 'What's this XR thingy' to 'Wow, that's neat'.
Faculty Head of Department
Conclusion and Future Research Directions
This study has provided insights into the application of immersive technologies for knowledge exchange by exploring the use of VR within educational and industry contexts.
The dissemination activities, including Applicant Open Day Sessions and the Digital Well-being Conference, highlighted VR’s practical applications and engagement potential, demonstrating its effectiveness in fostering collaboration, creativity, and innovative thinking among participants. Experiential learning within immersive environments encouraged participants to consider applications within multiple industries. Challenges faced with IT and networking underscored the importance of planning and testing.
Future Research Directions
Looking ahead, I am committed to continuing my work in immersive technology, focusing on projects that push the boundaries of XR. I am actively exploring XR communities and collaborating with industry leaders like Julia Bruton from Women in VR, where we are developing new projects to engage and inspire my students. Additionally, I have recently joined the Swift XR Creators Program, where I am excited to explore their cutting-edge tools to create innovative prototypes, storytelling, and immersive experiences.