Teaching in a Virtual Winter Wonderland: A Christmas Lecture as an Immersive Learning Experience
Snow-covered mountains, a whiteboard in front of an icy blue lake, delicious-looking gingerbread cookies, and a festively decorated Christmas tree: A seemingly normal lecture from the »Virtual Reality and Visualization« professorship was relocated to an extraordinary setting before Christmas. Rather than meeting in the lecture hall, students and instructors gathered together in a specially designed digital winter wonderland to learn, discuss, and experiment together. The »3D Interaction Techniques: Manipulation« event took place entirely over virtual reality.
Prof. Bernd Fröhlich and PhD student and teaching assistant Tony Jan Zöppig designed the lecture as part of the »Virtual Reality« Master’s course and opened up the virtual space as a lecture hall and experimental space. Students were able to participate from home using a head-mounted display or from the Faculty of Media’s VR Lab. Meeting as avatars, participants followed the lecture on a virtual stage, moved through the space, interacted with content, and took part in short quizzes together. The lecture transformed into a spatially experimental event that took place in real time, enabling collaborative learning in virtual space.
The content of the lecture was firmly based on the curriculum. Topics included traditional and current 3D interaction techniques, such as the HOMER Method, the Go-Go and Prism techniques, and Guiard’s Three Principles for Bimanual Asymmetric Activities. Demonstrations, interactive examples, and hands-on implementation in the virtual environment provided impressive examples of how theoretical VR research concepts can be directly experienced.
The Christmas lecture was part of the »Teaching VR in VR« didactic concept, which is being tested as part of the course. The aim is to not only discuss virtual reality, but to use it as a teaching and learning space. Students learn the basics of modern VR systems directly in the subject medium of the course: from stereoscopic vision and computer graphics to 3D input devices and navigation techniques to collaborative multi-user environments.
The virtual Christmas event showed that this works in a technical sense while also allowing new forms of awareness, interaction, and collaborative learning to emerge. The lecture combined technical expertise with playful elements where students could tangibly experience how immersive technologies can revolutionise university teaching beyond traditional screens and lecture halls. The Christmas VR lecture was not only a special way to close off the year, it was also a striking example of how research, teaching, and experimentation are combined at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar – right in the middle of a winter wonderland.