How HoloMeeting can be used in Education
Over the last several years, the emergence of immersive technologies has made a huge impact on education in providing students various ways to get information from different sources. Advanced technologies have significantly transformed the conventional approach to education, bringing it to a whole new level that makes the learning process more exciting and engaging.
More recently, the latest innovations of HoloLens Mixed Reality have brought many positive effects on changing the face of education. Mixed Reality applications are not only enabling students to benefit from immersive experiences but also helping them get access to information from real-life perspectives. It is undeniable that one of the most outstanding features that Mixed Reality offers is a collaborative and shared experience between HoloLens users. This ultimately adds value to the learning process by providing informative and in-depth learning materials so that students can get the information quicker and easier. From a teaching point of view, it offers lecturers new opportunities to engage remotely with students, and other higher education personnel remotely.
A new way to teach, a new way to learn, a new way to collaborate
While we have seen that Mixed Reality effectively supports the learning experience such as through Case Western Reserve University’s impressive HoloAnatomy application, there still remains some hindrances to effective remote teaching.
Imagine how difficult it is to organise meetings or discussions when professors are working at different locations within a dispersed campus or even internationally. This situation involves certain difficulties regarding communication, i.e, how to share and receive information effectively. However, the problems of remote meetings can be solved in no time with the use of Mixed Reality.
At Kazendi, we are attempting to understand these problems and their demands as well as constantly seeking for solutions to make impossible things become possible and better. We’re proud to introduce HoloMeeting, an app that brings the best solution to remotely meet, collaborate and communicate. In a nutshell, HoloMeeting allows HoloLens’ users to collaborate with others remotely by sharing files and documents such as images and even 3D models. The application provides a wide range of features and functions that can be used for immersive meetings among corporate colleagues. There is a strong use case for HoloMeeting’s usage in academia too for both teaching and collaboration.
Below is a closer look at how HoloMeeting can add significant value to education.
The challenges
In order to understand the concept of HoloMeeting and how it works, we need to look at scenarios in context where an immersive meeting collaboration tool would be useful. We can imagine, for instance, a professor or research associate or team who need to research and collaborate with off-site teams or other educational establishments. The current method of working would either entail regular video conference calls or numerous flights to and from each establishment in order to collaborate. This is neither cost effective nor an ideal solution to promote fluid collaboration. Or perhaps a professor wishes to engage in a round table at a conference or university abroad but is unable to travel, or give a small research lecture to fellows from international education establishments. These are just a few contextual scenarios where current communication and collaboration practices are insufficient.
The solution — Introducing HoloMeeting
With Mixed Reality and HoloLens however, such inefficiencies and hurdles to fluidity can come obsolete. From feedback with both corporate clientele, academics and our own internal needs and requirements as a remote team we created HoloMeeting.
HoloMeeting is an immersive communication and collaboration tool for Microsoft HoloLens. Our virtual meeting solution allows you to solve almost all the problems concerning remote meetings in ways that were not possible before.
Using the HoloLens, not only you can easily participate in a holographic meeting with a group of up to 10 people but also actively interact and share projects, models or research in real time and with detailed context.
What truly differentiates HoloMeeting from other remote tools will be discussed through its unique value proposition listed below.
Features to benefit academia
In both teaching and research scenarios, smooth collaboration and the ability to articulate one’s point accurately and efficiently is crucial to success.
HoloMeeting addresses this need with its core feature: the shared workspace. This feature, as pictured below allows the solution to transform one-directional meetings into truly collaborative affairs. This has the potential to increase engagement and involvement for both students and educational professionals alike in both a research and a teaching capacity.
Each participant in a HoloMeeting will have his or her own HoloLens. In the centre of their virtual view is a box that can be adjusted in size according to need/preference. This is the shared workspace and the central focal point of all holo meetings. Whatever content is placed in the shared workspace be it pdf documents or 3D models becomes visible to the rest of the participants.
Everyone can manipulate and interact with the content by changing their own relative position to analyse them from different angles simply by walking around.
The shared workspace gives you the opportunity to virtually work alongside others while allowing everyone to constantly check and produce work to make a collaborative project.
As changes and alterations are made, they are remembered so lectures or workshops can be conducted, paused and resumed without the need to set up as new each time. We are currently working on a whiteboard feature to allow for some aspects of a traditional class or meeting room to be incorporated into HoloMeeting where notes, tables, graphs, annotations etc. can be made by participants in real-time as the meeting/class is happening.
For research professionals, having this shared workspace allows for a seamless transition between individual research and tasks and group collaboration — negating any need for excessive travel which can unnecessarily hold back research projects.
Inclusive and Engaging
Another feature of HoloMeeting that is a benefit for collaborative research or workshops is the gaze pointer.
This function, featured below, allows HoloMeeting to be as inclusive and interactive as a real life meeting geven when working remotely.
When presenting a new idea or introducing an new aspect to research , it is often time-consuming to describe and explain in detail every single aspect in a real life meeting, let alone in a remote scenario.These current one dimensional inefficiencies often lead to confusion and misinterpreted information.
HoloMeeting’s gaze function allows presenters and meeting participants to see exactly what each other is looking at. This gives presenters or lecturers the ability to know which direction your colleagues are looking at in order to give them more precise information or direct them to move around the shared workspace to better inform their view.
HoloMeeting also improves the learning experience as you can deliver workshops remotely while still actively reaching out to students. When a student needs to raise questions on a particular part of the content he or she can just look exactly at the item. This is especially useful for encouraging engagement among all participants as the gaze pointer enables the lecturer to clearly see what the student wants to ask in order to give them precise answers.
This gives greater possibilities for holding workshops with remote or international students for instance without losing the sense of immersiveness or inclusiveness that real life gives.
Spatial sound provides real support
Creating that real world environment is essential in allowing remote education from both a research and collaboration as well as a teaching perspective to eclipse current available solutions.
The 3D or spatial sound feature of HoloMeeting addresses a concern regarding how ‘real’ remote can feel and acts as additional support for the gaze pointer. For instance, if a participant speaks to the right of you you will hear them in your right ear — exactly as you would in a real meeting scenario.
Therefore, by putting incorporating spatial sound intoto HoloMeeting, the aim is not only to create an environment where many participants can talk at the same time and still be heard but also help ensure that everyone is focused and engaged. By being able to record the audio from each individual HoloLens, this ensures that important meetings, research discussions, board of directors conferences etc. can be noted for future reference.
Spatial sound also aids the expedition of meetings and conference calls, as well as ensuring efficiency of workshops etc. by allowing a clear contribution from all participants. With HoloMeeting information is delivered more effectively thus ensuring a greater quality of remote meeting.
Conclusion
HoloMeeting has been designed to benefit its audience. So whether you require an open and playful structure for collaboration, a more structured system for meetings or an open environment to promote experimentation and research you can achieve this within one application.
As such, HoloMeeting is as equally beneficial for architecture as it is for financial institutions or educational establishments. We are constantly improving and exploring the potential features of HoloMeeting (and have established a paid beta programme so users can directly influence the build) so that it can deliver the best performances for each specific use case.
We look forward to inviting educational establishments to demo HoloMeeting and explore different ways it can be used to improve education, research and training.
Originally published at www.kazendi.com.
