Universities and companies were not prepared to the changes introduced to limit the spread of COVID-19 in Norway. Universities had to switch to online teaching overnight. There is still uncertainty how measures to control the pandemic will keep affecting universities in the short and middle term. Such measures have consequences on how to carry out research that usually relies on students, researcher and volunteers using the equipment and applications. Our group carries out research on virtual/augmented/extended reality (VR/AR/XR) for immersive training and learning. This research often involves user studies. We had established procedures on how to use the equipment, carry out demonstrations and teaching for students, teachers and visitors, develop projects as part of bachelor and master projects and test new applications with volunteers. The measures taken by authorities to control the spread of the pandemic made it difficult or unfeasible to carry out some of those activities. In this paper we describe how our group and XR lab reacted after universities were closed to students’ presence in campus in March 2020. We present our actions to keep research ongoing, our evaluation of some of those actions and discuss how we had to change the way we operate our XR lab in order to continue teaching and research in the near future, under the assumption that restrictions due to the pandemic can be re-implemented at short notice. We propose procedures to run an XR lab in a manner that inspires visitors to feel safe and confident of using the equipment. Our contribution is the proposal of procedures to run an educational XR lab safely and contribute towards the conversation about how to carry out research involving users in XR under pandemic restrictions.

Extended reality (XR) applications for education are usually associated with motivation, engagement, knowledge and experiences that are difficult to achieve in the real world. One example of such knowledge in military education is the threat-based approach to protection of civilians in armed conflicts. The Norwegian Defence University College (NDUC) educates officers on the threat-based approach. This approach challenges conventional military practice, introducing new ways of thinking about what military forces can and cannot do to protect civilians from violence. Today, militaries are expected to protect civilians from perpetrators that target them as part of their warfare, expanding their responsibilities under International Humanitarian Law. This expansion of tasks represents “troublesome knowledge” for many military officers and demands a deeper understanding of the rationales and strategies driving perpetrators’ targeting of civilians. To overcome this pedagogical challenge, we developed an XR-supported educational program combining immersive experiences and pedagogical approaches, including combined 360°-videos and embodiment, dialogue with virtual humans and collaborative VR-landscapes to encourage immersive peer-to-peer learning. The results are encouraging, suggesting high levels of acceptance by learners of the threat-based concept, an effect on stimulating critical discussion and a positive reaction to XR-supported learning.

This poster introduces the development of a recommender system to guide users in adapting a virtual environment into matching objects in the physical world. Emphasis is placed on avoiding cognitive overload resulting from providing options for substitution without considering the number of physical objects present. This is the first step towards a comprehensive recommender system for user-driven adaptation of Virtual Environments through immersive Virtual Reality systems.

Serious games have the potential to complement existing teaching methods by motivating and providing a more enjoyable experience for the players or by simulating events that would be otherwise difficult to reproduce in the classroom. Despite their potential, little is known about how the games could be used not only for teaching but also as assessment tools. This research addresses this gap. We present an in-game assessment method which assesses the learning objectives included in the game without the need for a separate intervention. We evaluate the proposed method and we show that there is no statistically significant difference in participants being assessed through a questionnaire outside the game and the integrated game assessment method. Moreover, we looked at whether the player experience has been affected by the changes needed in the game design and the players' preferences for different types of assessment. Most participants preferred being assessed through the game. They also felt that the assessment has overall improved their game experience.