Develop your 360° Virtual Tour

A virtual tour is an interactive walkthrough of a sequence of 360-degrees spherical videos or photos that simulates the process of a real-life and realistic environment. Additional audio and textual information can be integrated to create a guided tour.

Example of a virtual tour through a waste water treatment plant: https ://nmc360.tudel f t .n l/vt_wwt_bsc. This tour has been developed with Merle de Kreuk of the faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences at TU Delft. This virtual tour is developed for a bachelor course ‘Introduction to Water Treatment’. The learning objectives of the virtual tour were; to recognise the process units, describe their function and make design calculations on the wastewater treatment plant. The tour has been developed because only 20 out of the 120 students could participate in the actual field trip. The virtual tour makes an engaging field trip accessible for the students at home.

Field trips are often used in higher education as a practical learning tool. However, they are not always accessible for all students due to limited financial and organisation-

al resources. A 360-degree virtual tour could provide an alternative for field trips. A virtual tour can be re-used, altered to specific needs, viewed in a student’s own pace, is accessible at any time and place and therewith provides a flexible learning experience.There is no straightforward process in designing a virtual tour. Several consid-erations concerning quality, budget and planning, must be taken into account. As a teacher you will want the best educational means, but this may have an impact on the budget and planning. This document and the additional worksheet can support you in the decision making process on the design considerations for the development of a virtual tour. Follow the 4 process phases and steps, iterate, and develop your own virtual tour for your course. Use the worksheet to get a quick overview of your design before developing extensive plans.

PHASE 1: Explore learning goals

Within this phase you will explore the basic needs for the development of a vir-tual tour. Reflecting on the problems in your course and how a virtual tour may support your students.

Step 1: Course problemWhat needs to be improved in my course?A virtual tour and virtual reality can enhance engagements, may enhance conceptual and visual understanding, or solves logistical and organisational is-sues. A virtual tour is a new technolog-ical method, that may be regarded as something we “need to implement” in the curriculum. However, before you invest in such innovative projects, it is good to keep the specific goal in mind of the virtual tour and the problem you are try-ing to solve. Will a virtual tour provide a solution to the problems? There might be other means that can be used too.

Tips:- Use course evaluations to determine

what can be improved - Talk to students to analyse the problem

more in-depth

Step 2: Learning objectiveWhat will students need to learn from the virtual tour?Determine the learning objective of your course beforehand and specify the objec-tives of the virtual tour. These can be sim-ilar to the field trip, but you can also try to add additional objectives or a higher level of learning using bloom taxonomy.

Step 3: Learning activities What will students see or hear to meet the learning objectives?Determine which interesting specific lo-cations the students need to see to meet the learning objectives. You can visit the specific company where you would like to make recordings for the virtual tour. Walk around with a local technician to evaluate the specific locations and keep in mind that you will record in a 360-de-grees environment. Within these envi-ronments there are so-called “points of interest” that mark the specific interesting points for the students. Develop a route that is interesting for the students to walk-through. After pre-scouting the location determine what students need to hear during the vir-tual tour to meet the learning objectives. You can start developing a script to help you with the storyline. This script will probably be adjusted overtime once the virtual tour will be created.

Tips: - Take pictures during the tour with a

360-degrees handheld-camera- Small and dark areas are challenging to

record- Eye height recordings feel most natural

in a VR environment- Shorter tours are less expensive.

Decide whether it is necessary to record everything

- Develop short paragraphs within the script to keep the attention of the students

- Write from a personal perspective to enhance engagement

Step 4: Assessment How do you assess the learning objective and virtual tour goal?To close the learning loop for the virtu-al tour, assessment and feedback is im-portant. You will also need to evaluate whether or not the investment of the vir-tual tour was worth it and if it solved your problem that was formulated in step 1.

PHASE 2: Design the technology

In this phase you can determine multi-ple engaging and technological design options for the development of a virtual tour.

Step 5: Engagement How engaging does the virtual tour need to be, both visually and auditorily?Developing a virtual tour can be done very simply with photos, or complex with

videos and interactive elements. Videos and interactive elements are more time consuming and expensive. High quality videos can be hard to view on cheap vir-tual reality glasses. Nevertheless, videos increase student engagement. During a real field trip a tour guide tells enthusiastic stories about the site. Integrating a tour guide within the video of the virtual tour can en-hance student engagement. Further-more, the tour guide can point out interesting elements by hand to enhance learning. Keep in mind that incorporat-ing a tour guide makes your virtual more complicated since the tour guide will need to have a clear story that matches the learning objective. Using a voice-over might therefore be preferred, since it is more simple in execution and you can make sure that the storyline contributes to the learning objective. Adjustments can also be made more easily in a voice-over compared to using a tour guide.To choose the best option, reflect on step two and consider whether or not your students need to see moving objects to meet the learning objective.

Tips:- Keep in mind a person’s (virtual) personal

space when incorporating a tour guide- Let the tour guide point to or gaze at

the points of interests - Voice-overs make the virtual tour

adjustable for multiple use- Adding 360-degrees audio in both

options can enhance the points of interest even more

Step 6: Technology transfer How visually engaging do learning acti- vities need to be?After you have decided on the design of the virtual tour itself, you need to think about how the students can watch the virtual tour; via a desktop or via virtu-al reality glasses. Desktop solutions are low threshold but less immersive than virtual reality glasses. >>

By offering google cardboards, students can watch the virtual tour on their own mobile phone. The screen resolution is not comparable with the current HD televisions, but it is a low threshold for implementing virtual tours in large classes. Another option is to buy or rent high-end virtual reality glasses and assign a VR-room at your department where students can subscribe to watch the tour.

PHASE 3: Develop an action plan

Step 7: Key partners Who do you need to develop the virtual tour?If you are not sure about the whole de-sign and action plan you can consider to contact an external media company to support you with this process and help you with the logistical issues. Maybe your university already has an internal depart-ment that works with innovative media solutions that can be contacted to explore the virtual tour development with you.

Step 8: Costs Which costs are involved in developing the virtual tour?After your idea on the content and design of the virtual tour has crystallised, you can make an estimation of the costs that are involved. An external media company or internal department can provide you with some quotes, or you can start making your own calculations. Keep in mind that there is e.g. software, hardware, data sto-rage and human resources required for the development of the tour. If you believe that these costs exceed your expectations you need to reconsider the design consi- derations. Once you change your design considerations you must also reflect again on your learning objective to ensure this is still valid.

Step 9: Key resourcesWhat resources require the technology

transfer, level of engagement, assessment strategy and logistics plan?During this step you will need to make an overview of all the resources that are necessary to develop and execute the design of the virtual tour. This can be technology means such as virtual reality glasses or software, but also the (internal) knowledge that is required to develop and deliver the virtual tour.

Step 10: Key logistics How accessible is the virtual tour?Implementing a virtual tour can be chal-lenging. The technology is rather new for students and instructions and demonstra-tions are important. Depending on the chosen technology transfer a logistical plan needs to be developed to make sure each student can access the virtual tour.

Tips:- Keep in mind that accessing the virtual

tour online requires a lot of data

PHASE 4: Execution

Within the execution phase you, as a tea-cher, need to make sure that the media company does everything according to your plan. Your role will therefore more be on su-pervising and controlling than developing.

Step 11: Recording Are you sure that all elements meet the learning objective?It is highly recommendable to be present during the actual recording of the tour to ensure that each scene is shot correctly and that no scenes are missed. This will prevent you from having to go back to the location to record missing specific steps and will save you extra time and money.

Tips:- Send a teaching assistant to the site to

do the check-up if you don’t have a lot of time

- Record everything on the same day toensure that filming conditions, such asthe weather, clothing of people you willbe filming etc., are the same

Step 12: Programming Does the virtual tour make sense?Once all the videos or photos have been shot the media company will edit the different shots into an integrated virtu-al tour. Make sure that all technical and visual problems are eliminated to avoid rejection of the virtual tour by students. Check whether all the locations are edited in the correct order and that the sound is correct. Make sure that all the “points of interest” are visible and that there are no visual errors.

Step 13: Evaluation How effective was the virtual tour?You will need to evaluate the success-fulness of the virtual tour with the stu-dents after they tested it. Execute your assessment plan and evaluate whether or not the course problem is solved. Inter-act with the students to receive feedback in order to make improvements for next year’s students.

Final remarks:Although the use of virtual reality and virtual tours is not new, it is still a new technology that is used in the educational environment. Virtual tours may not be as intuitive as the current apps and there may be a small learning curve for the students. Working with new technologies always has its drawbacks and some peo-ple avoid using them. But it is definitely an engaging technology that can be an addition to your course. Offering the virtual tour as an alternative for a field trip can save a lot of organisational time. It can reach a large group of (international) students and students can view the tour at any time, place and pace.

ContactFor questions or tips about the organisation and development of a virtual tour contact Danielle Ceulemans: d.s.ceulemans@tudelft.nl

www.4tu.nl/cee