Abstract:

The pandemic completely limited the access of undergraduate and graduate students from the National University of Colombia (UNAL) to practical learning. Spaces such as laboratories, field trips, work with patients, animals, humans, and other practical works before the pandemic were carried out in the classrooms. As a consequence of the limitation of these spaces, some UNAL students perceive that: they do not have the knowledge that will be necessary for their work environment (for instance, handling laboratory instruments or lacking of skills certification), they reached a decontextualized learning and a decrease in the quality of the practical contents.

Considering the above, professors used different types of solutions to provide the knowledge that other conditions would occur in the laboratories. Among the strategies were:
(1) remote visits, instructors enter the laboratory in person and from there transmit the necessary procedures in real-time,
(2) Videos - laboratory tours, faculty share existing videos of the laboratories, either developed by themselves or by a third party,
(3) simulations in the student's environment, where the teacher adjusts the elements and procedures to be developed in the laboratory so that each student can perform it autonomously in their houses
(4) analysis of data already collected and
(5) simulations through programs, where the page or application allows measurements or virtual manipulations of different elements that the student must analyze.

However, these solutions did not achieve an experience that brought students closer to real work in the laboratory. Consequently, to face this challenge, an alliance was made with an UNAL spinoff company to develop a platform for immersive laboratory practices in virtual 360 video environments. With this approach, students had a better understanding of the phenomena observed in the laboratory, while they perceived the spaces and situations that occur in face-to-face training.

UNAL has defined strategies to increase and strengthen the collective academic construction of new products and necessary digital processes. Strengthening the competencies of human capital that facilitate the university's intelligent articulation and potentization of the university's internal capacities to achieve the solution of institutional needs with the support of the university community. Among the actions, new platforms have been implemented with technologies for the intelligent management of processes focused on our students, improving the university experience. On the other hand, training plans, appropriation of new tools, and development of strategies have been included to promote the strengthening of the digital culture with the support of the digitization of processes.

Keywords:

Virtual laboratory, VR, 360 video environments.