Student Designs in Augmented Tourism
We are iterating once again on our augmented learning environments. In collaboration with MAVR, an immersive learning group based here in Japan and KUFSGT, a new School of Global Tourism founded in 2017 at Kyoto University of Foreign Studies. As a founding faculty member, I was able to introduce some new courses that get students using AR/VR to create and learn. If you are unaware of some of our past designs, you can take a look at our Community AR Rally in 2016 and our TEDxKyoto Designs online.
What is really exciting about this recent set of immersive environments is that students are now taking a major role in creating the content and designing the experience. This is large part in thanks to a new version of ARientation, an application designed to simplify the workflow of creating augmented reality content so ideas can be prototyped in seconds. Also because I have created a host of new courses for our new department that integrate the use of augmented and virtual reality technologies. So students are able to learn and create AR and VR content for tourism, marketing, and gaming in those classes, test them in class, and then conduct field/beta tests with campus visitors during open campus.
This year our open campus was held on August 2–4th. We created an area of campus allocated to these activities called the ARVR Experience Zone. There were 4 main activities and a host of other content on display.
The main activities included
KUFS GO
This was a project from a class I teach called ‘Game Based Tourism’. In this class we take a look at concepts and theories from game design and seek to apply them to tourism by using augmented and virtual realities to create new tourism experiences. This year several of the students took to Pokemon GO and its connection to tourism and created a campus tour/scavenger hunt that employed the ARientation augmented reality platform. It starts with an on boarding process by which a student volunteer explains to visitors that they need to embark on an adventure to recover some stolen important information from the university. Also during this on boarding process participants are shown how to download and use the app on their own devices or where given an iPad to use with the application already loaded.
Using the application participants find visual markers to release digital contents connected to them. In most cases that content comes in the form of videos streamed from YouTube. The content give hints and clues that participants use to find locations on campus that displays more ARientation markers, and so on and so on, until you get a good idea of how to get around campus and what facilities are available.
The version of the activity the students created in the Game Based Tourism course had 10 locations to find on campus. That number was cut down to four to accommodate the lack of free time participants were thought to have during open campus.
After each new location was discovered participants were shown videos and web content where current students explained the space, how they used it, and their experience there. After that a new set of clues was unlocked to guide participants to the next location.
At the end, there was a final maker that asked participants to take a victory selfie with a mission complete stamp overlayed in their picture.
The whole experience lasted an average of 25 minutes and after participants were given prizes and asked by current students to join in other activities.
This activity was built on the ARientation application and platfrom, which could be a great tool for other educators and tourism professionals. Please find out more about it using the links below or reach out to me for more information.
My Hometown Project
In this project students are designing and conducting tours on their hometowns in VR. VR is proving to be a wonderful tool to give tourism students practical experience in developing and guiding tours. After some fundamental training in 360 photography and VR hardware, students are given the task of creating short tours of their hometowns in VR. They are told to focus on personal stories rather than general area information. This was in the hopes of giving more agency to the students as they are not native speakers of English and students sometimes come from different locations, some in the countryside with no major tourism attractions.
To start this process, I first distribute a version of Google cardboard to the students and take them on a sample tour I have created, all while describing the process and the tools that went into creating the tour of the Kyoto countryside I lived for about 10 years. I also created a mixed reality video so students could get a sense of what was possible using VR to give guided tours. Here is that video.
After tours were created we got into groups and students took turns giving guiding each other, in between giving time to reflect and evaluate each tour’s design and the tour guide’s performance.
It was these tours that visitors to the ARVR Zone were invited to participate in. Student volunteers guided tours in VR to their hometowns. I have found this to be a wonderful way to connect on a personal level. This was from initial activities I did at a previous university several years ago. I found immediately that students wanted to revisit the place they grew up. The first time I tried Google Earth VR, I traveled from Japan, back to Arizona, to the street where I spent most of the childhood.
From this project it is my hope to start building a database of personal tours to connect stories and people, and help relieve the consentration of tourism in Japan away from the now overcrowded major temples, shrines, and other tourist attractions.
GAME ZONE
Students were forming a board game circle after experiencing our Game Based Tourism course and getting to know the finer points of game design. So some students created tutorials and lessons on how to play games using augmented reality and the ARientation platform. Board games were on display and by using the application you could learn how to play the games.
We also had some commercial partners come and give demos of language learning inside of VR too. From these designs I am hoping once again to iterate on getting students designing and creating in these new mediums. Please stay tuned to our VR events over at Together Learning Conference or watch Forever Kyoto for advancements in these projects.
I will leave you with a highlight video of the events.
Cite this article:
Hawkinson, E. (2019). Student Designs in Augmented Tourism. Ready Teacher One. Retrieved August 16, 2019, from https://medium.com/@erichawkinson/student-designs-in-augmented-tourism-bc168bc5f7f.
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