Holographic learning: A mixed reality trial of Microsoft HoloLens in an Australian secondary school

Abstract

The technology supporting augmented and mixed reality educational environments is advancing with recent hardware including self-contained headsets that are able to simulate holographic additions to real spaces. These technical advances appear to offer greater capacity to actually realise the educational potential and promise of such technologies noted in the literature over the last decade. This article adds to this literature by reporting on the pilot phase of an educational design research project using the Microsoft HoloLens device in a secondary school setting in Australia. Consistent with previous research in this area, this project found ongoing technical and managerial limitations in implementing augmented and mixed reality, including a continuing concern by many participating teachers of a lack of control of the mixed reality environment. Notably, the pilot study also revealed different understandings of the potential for embodied learning between students, teachers and researchers that requires further research.

Exploring the application of mixed reality in Nurse education

“…The advancement in information technologies has seen the evolution of a range of technology. These technologies can be conceptualised as a continuum from VR, where learners are experiencing an environment that is computer generated6 to Augmented Reality (AR) in which digital elements are situated within the real world 7. Miligram and Kishino8 suggest that along the continuum sits a particular subclass of VR related technologies that involve the merging of real and virtual worlds, which are referred to generically as mixed reality (MR).…”

“…They acknowledged the resistance that individuals are likely to have in regard to moving away from more traditional approaches and the opposition to adopt these new approaches, in addition to the cost associated with implementation 21. While these aspects are likely to result in some opposition to engaging in new teaching approaches, the potential that this technology has shown as an educational technique in other disciplines should not be ignored 6 22…”

Technology enhanced learning environments and the potential for enhancing spatial reasoning: a mixed methods study

“…By partnering with a school which was invested in assessing the educative effectiveness of their new technologically enhanced learning space, this study aimed to examine how lessons within this new environment effected students spatial reasoning development. Researchers consistently identify digital tools, such as dynamic geometric environments (Sinclair et al, 2016), 3D printing (Cochran et al, 2016), virtual reality (Ulan et al, 2018, Leonard andFitzgerald, 2018) and games such as Minecraft (Andrus et al, 2020, Fowler et al, 2019, as effective developers of spatial reasoning. Despite the significant development of these educational technologies and the many papers which suggest digital tools as effective conduits for developing spatial reasoning (see for example Attard et al, 2020;Venturini & Sinclair, 2017), little actual empirical work has been conducted.…”

MESH360: a framework for designing MMR-enhanced clinical simulations

“…Textbooks are the classic low-fidelity way of describing and illustrating a clinical scenario. Augmented reality (AR) has received a resurgence of interest in education with the development of technologies such as the Microsoft Hololens (Leonard and Fitzgerald 2018) and has been used to enhance textbook experiences through image recognition-triggered playback of multimedia. However, developing authentic learning experiences for devices such as the Hololens relying on high-end computing capacity is still prohibitively expensive, and most current examples bring little more authentic learning affordances than that of an interactive textbook.…”