Collaborative Creation of 360° video for occupational education
The „Immersive Futures“ project aimed to use VR-based narrative formats and 360-degree videos to make training occupations virtually tangible in an increasingly digitalized working world narrated by the target group themselves.
The objective of the project was
- the development of a collaborative VR-based narrative as a demonstration model for an immersive narratable training occupation,
- the technical and soci-ological evaluation of collaboration in the production of the demonstration model at a Hamburg school, and
- based on these experiences, the preparation of an application for funding of an interdisciplinary research project to expand the project and development idea.
The project idea was based on the assumption that (educational) pathways and careers among young people, who as „digital natives“ deal with digital media as a matter of course, is better addressed through (role) play and action in a virtual reality than through analog formats currently used, such as written information material, counsel-ling sessions, or training fairs.
The added value of a toolchain media environment developed jointly by computer science, social sciences and schools for the production of technically evaluated digital storytelling formats results from known advantages of simulated „learning by doing“ compared to conventional teaching and learning methods: experiencing and acting in virtual (professional) realities enables immersion, i.e. a deep and emotional experience.
Based on the VR-framework A-Frame a basic application to view, cut and edit 360-degree video snippets in a visual editor (visual inspector) was created. A-Frame uses declarative HTML and an HTML compliant Entity-Component architecture. The resulting code is relatively transparent and easy to edit even for people with limited computational experience.