How San Diego State University Used 360/VR Media to Fuel Active Learning

All images courtesy of San Diego State University

 The challenge

Effective curricula doesn't exist without student engagement. Lecturer of screenwriting, Stuart Voytilla from San Diego State University's (SDSU) School of Theatre, Television, and Film, as well as faculty lead for the SDSU Story Lab, paired interactive video with 360 video navigation and immersive Virtual Reality (VR) media to leverage innovative teaching techniques, create active learning experiences, and enhance student engagement.

The solution

PlayPosit by WeVideo gave San Diego State University an interactive video platform seamlessly paired with 360/VR media to embrace experiential storytelling and narrative and deliver meaningful content. Stuart used PlayPosit to:

• Add critical interactions: Stuart highlights the importance of orienting students to assignments before, during, and after immersions with interactions like pauses, check-alls, student feedback questions, and clickable touch points.
• Properly guide active learning: Stuart emphasizes ways to guide student experiences to maximize safety and focus, especially when shifting between 360 and 180 perspectives. 
• Create dynamic course paths: Stuart's use of interactive video helps him deliver engaging, nonlinear experiential narratives in innovative ways, strategically guide students through complex spatial narratives, and provide clear, linear directives within immersive experiences.

PlayPosit's seamless integration with diverse media helps educators like Stuart promote active learning initiatives, foster professional experiences without having to be in the field, and create scalable projects that save time long-term.

Key takeaways

Using 360/VR narratives and PlayPosit by WeVideo together has shown:

• Enhanced Learning: Interactive video innovates and elevates teaching methods
• Effective Assessment: Validates PlayPosit as a tool to guide student focus and engagement
• Higher Ed Potential: Promises for academic integration

Regardless of class size, budget, or campus media resources, PlayPosit creates an accessible solution to help educators create active learning experiences and boost student engagement using interactive video.

Hear the full story

Watch Professor Stuart Voytilla share his approach to using PlayPosit in San Diego State University's School of Theatre, Television, and Film, recorded during the PlayPosit Exchange summer event. Access the full session below.

Note: the bulbs Stuart references in the recording span multiple disciplines as part of his research for the SDSU Story Lab — an incubator within SDSU's Virtual Immersive Teaching and Learning (ViTaL) Research Center charged with advancing research and practical applications of storytelling, narrative, and XR technologies. 

Benefits of interactive video

• Triple engagement: Provide effective curricula with measurable results. Track progress, completion, and retention with powerful analytics, then remediate to scale.
• Create flexible, self-paced programs: Customize clickable elements for dynamic, asynchronous learning experiences that suit various learning styles and environments.
• Personalize instruction: Sequence learning to honor comprehension levels, learner needs, and performance objectives.

Practical strategies for educators

• Add strategic interactions: Guide understanding, retention, and performance with interactive elements like polls, check-alls, pauses, fill-in-the-blanks, multiple choice, and more. Then, use data to assess and repeat.
• Use learning objectives to course-create: Adapt traditional teaching materials to align with learning objectives. Consider ways to craft meaning, how to structure narratives, the dynamics of the characters and their relationships, ways to properly onboard the technology, etc.
• Encourage student feedback (and use it): Use interactive assessment tools to identify learner gaps, encourage 1:1 feedback, and prompt asynchronous group discussions.