Book a free demo<\/h3> If you\u2019d like to learn more about how your school, college or university can support students, educators and the wider community with ThingLink, schedule a free call with our Education Specialists.<\/p>Book a free consultation<\/button><\/section>\n\n\n\nChallenges<\/h1>\n\n\n\n Creating immersive content would hopefully address a couple of key challenges that TCU faced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nCreating immersive experiences easily and quickly to answer a specific need: namely campus and departmental tours. For example, TCU\u2019s Department of Theater currently admits students for their courses from all over the country, many of whom struggle to travel to Texas to experience the department in action in-person. However it\u2019s hard for the staff to give a flavour of their department using just descriptions and photos on the TCU website. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\nCreating an immersive tour of the department seemed an ideal solution, but in general, this type of content requires employing external software specialists, or buying expensive specialist cameras, equipment and software licences for technology that is difficult and time-consuming to master. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nProviding the students, and other staff, with a tool that would be straightforward for them to pick up, regardless of background, previous experience or expertise. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\nTo find solutions to both these challenges, Curby investigated alternative platforms such as Unreal Engine, Unity, and others. However they required prior knowledge and a particular skill set which would take time to learn, time which neither Curby nor his students had available. Curby\u2019s educational technology background meant he had some<\/em> limited experience with immersive technology, but no background or expertise in programming. His concern was that the level of technical expertise required to create content would create serious barriers to entry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\u201cIf you have a great idea, but you don’t have an easy way for people to test it out to make their ideas come to life, you inoculate them from ever wanting to try that idea ever again. If you dump them into one of these other complex platforms, they’re immediately going to think \u2018I’m not ever going to do this because it’s too hard\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nHowever no such barriers existed when Curby experimented with using ThingLink, designed to be the easiest platform for anyone to create interactive and immersive experiences and learning environments, regardless of experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solutions<\/h1>\n\n\n\nVirtual tours of the Theater Department using immersive 360 videos<\/h2>\n\n\n\n For the Theater Department tours, Curby used an Insta 360 camera and tripod that captures video and images. He spent a morning in the department capturing every aspect of their work, including private independent practice in a practice room, makeup classes, and group rehearsals. Each video was one take, simply a two minute video of the class or rehearsal in action, with Curby able to operate the camera via its app on his phone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He then put it together into a ThingLink virtual experience, with the rooms linked together via transit tags, and the experience entered via a theater front door 2D image. In total the video content was all shot in two hours, the videos all shared to his computer and uploaded to ThingLink in under an hour. In fact Curby estimates the entire time to create the whole <\/em><\/strong>ThingLink<\/em><\/strong> <\/em><\/strong>virtual tour<\/em><\/strong>, including shooting footage, was only five hours. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\u201cThing Link is so easy to enter into. It’s just drag and drop. You literally upload images like you would to <\/em>social media<\/em> or to Google Photos or to any other platform. And then creating the <\/em>interactive<\/em> content with the tags is so easy that it gives people a really easy entry point – from consuming virtual reality experiences, to creating them.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nThe tour will hopefully be shared on the department page in the fall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Virtual experiences for other departments will be created using Theater Department students to role-play<\/h3>\n\n\n\n The ease of creating the Theater Department tour has encouraged Curby and his colleagues in other departments to plan for using ThingLink to create simulations and scenarios in counseling, nursing, social work and similar fields. As graduate professionals, the students will be working with clients one-on-one, in sometimes very sensitive situations – which they wouldn’t have access to whilst at university, given confidentiality and privacy concerns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The theater students will act the roles of patients in these immersive role play scenarios to provide a realistic experience. Curby will use ThingLink Scenario Builder to create branched learning experiences, presenting the learners with a decision on the best course of action, which will then show the potential outcome and consequences of each choice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n