Abstract:

Integrating 360° videos into university teaching enables virtual excursions as a promising hands-on experience in the study curriculum. In mining education, 360° videos empower teachers to integrate –further- virtual mine excursions in their tight study plan, which could otherwise hardly be realized for many reasons. Such as the remoteness of many mines, group size restrictions, time and budget constraints and safety considerations.

Adding virtual excursions into the curriculum requires close attention to several content production aspects. This is due to the fundamental novelty in - film - content production and its usage in classrooms. Questions such as how do the learning goals change the current storylines for 360° videos and how does the medium amplify the learning goals, show the interplay between the medium and the learning content. This requires an active role of teachers in the production of 360° videos in order to gain the maximum benefit of 360° videos in teaching.

While there are scientific papers giving great starting basis into the use of 360° video in higher education, only few reflect how teachers become part of producing the content themselves ([1]-[7]). While there are guidelines how to film 360° video content by filming agencies ([8]-[10]), most of them address areas that are outside and do not fall under security or privacy restrictions. However, content production at industrial sites such as mines is challenging, as it often has to be conducted in a tight framework imposed by the host company. The visited mine sites need to assign supervisors, give safety instructions, provide personnel protective equipment and might have to accept smaller disturbances in production process. Often, the mine can be accessed only for a limited time and to a certain extent. In order to produce learning goal-oriented 360° content, within the constrained “framework” imposed by the hosting mine site, well-though pre-production planning is key.

This paper aims to present a guideline for filming and producing 360° videos used as virtual excursions for mining education. Within the context of the EIT funded Projects MiReBooks and VRMine, Mixed Reality content (e.g., 360°videos) is being introduced as a new digital standard for the European higher mining education ([11]). In the current process mining educators all over Europe produce 360° videos for educational purposes in various mining sites. In order to give other educational fields a low barrier starting guide to produce own 360° content for lectures an action research based summary of the production and reflection process with the mining educators. As an outcome, a guideline for the preproduction phase in content creation will be discussed along with an additional collection of best practices that influence and ease the postproduction phase.

Keywords:

Mixed reality, 360° videos, virtual excursions, guideline, raw material education, action research.