A Quick Trial of 360° Cameras in a Practical Session

Find out the pros and cons of 360 degree meeting room cameras in practical sessions.

Roisin Devaney, Susan Lennie, Andrea McGrattan

Situation

This practical session was based around students creating a meal to align with the recommendations of the EatWell guide, using ingredients provided in the food handling lab. The session involved a short introduction, followed by time for the activity, and feedback. At the last moment there was a request to record the practical session, and therefore a 360° camera was used as a quick solution – an ideal opportunity to test the camera’s capabilities.

These rooms are not set up for ReCap, so having this portable method of recording allowed for the session to be captured. The camera was connected to Zoom so that a remote student could watch the session or review the recording. As it happened, no one watched the stream live, so there was no interaction with a remote participant. As shown from the screenshots below, the camera could cover the whole room without needing to be moved. It can also zoom in and out to focus on where the action was taking place.

Method

The camera was quick and simple to set up, and lecturers used lapel mics to capture sound when they were addressing the class. The camera was placed on the demonstrators’ bench at the front of the room, where it could see the kitchen spaces as well as the session leads, and the whiteboard.

All present were made aware of the device. It was relatively unobtrusive and didn’t get in the way of the session – most people just forgot about it. This is a bonus as it means the lecturers don’t have to consider what to capture at various points during the session. They could also walk around the room naturally rather than being stuck at the fixed point of presenting from a particular spot at the front as the camera would follow them.

Results

As a quick solution, it was easy to set up, and the predetermined settings allowed for much of the session to be captured. It provided a record of the practical session, though due to the level of automation in where the camera chose to focus, some detail and some sound was lost. For example, on some occasions, the camera would choose to focus based on an incidental sound in the room, like a pot being scraped. This kind of auto-selection would work better in a situation such as a seminar where everyone sits around one table with less background noise and more obvious turn-taking when speaking.

The camera also captured incidental discussions – as it was placed at the front where students were collecting ingredients, it captured discussions between students about what they were choosing to include in their meal.

It was also able to capture two areas simultaneously and display them side by side, allowing for an overview of the room as well as capturing individual discussions.

Other Applications

There are a range of applications for this type of device in a practical setting. For example, for a remote student, the device could be placed in a group of students so that some collaboration would be possible. This would allow them to be more involved in the practical aspect of the session, though of course it would not be a complete substitution for in-person attendance.

Though the session recordings are relatively long, once uploaded to Panopto, bookmarks could be added to allow students to quickly navigate to various parts of the session, for example the input and feedback.

Contacts

Roisin Devaney, Susan Lennie and Andrea McGrattan, Nutrition and Dietetics, School of Biomedical, Nutritional and Sports Sciences

Resources

Owl Camera

Art of the Possible Lightning Talk including a brief overview of this work at 24:22.

360° Hidden Hotspots for Formative Assessment

A combination of 360° interactive images and interactive hotspot formative assessment tasks have been used to greatly enhance the Health and Safety lab training materials delivered in the School of Biomedical, Nutritional and Sport Sciences.

Within the school, there is a range of labs used in practical sessions. In previous years, preparatory Health and Safety Materials have been distributed on paper, or via PDF, however, one of the challenges of this mode of delivery is that some students do not necessarily engage with this material, resulting in some students not being well-prepared to work in these potentially hazardous environments.

These resources have now been moved to Canvas, and are available as general basic lab health and safety training in their own module. This module is targeted at Stage 1 Undergraduate students, though Stage 2 and 3 also have full access to the module for revision purposes. The module includes training on

  • Basic Health and Safety
  • Fire safety
  • General chemical, biological and physical hazards
  • General lab safety
  • Codes of practice

As well as module resources, there are also 360 lab tours that students can use to familiarise themselves with the lab environments, clicking through the images to ‘walk’ around the lab they might be using in the future.

A low-quality version to illustrate what students see when navigating the lab in 360.

The course concludes with quizzes and some ‘hidden hotspot’ tasks that students can use to test their own knowledge in hazard identification tasks. Interactive images like the one above have extra information inserted, which means that when students click on certain areas, information is displayed.

The interactive hotspots are created using the tool Theasys – 360 VR Online Virtual Tour Creator. One of the main advantages of using this tool is that the hotspot areas are hidden, meaning students have to explore the images in greater depth to discover the hazards. While there is a cursor change when a student hovers over the right spots, this is still much more hidden than in other tools, which highlight the hotspots with circles or other icons.

After the students have finished exploring the image, they can reveal all of the hotspots to find any they may have missed, allowing them to test their own knowledge. This could be enhanced even further by setting a Canvas quiz in the module or asking students to write a summary of the hazards found.

In addition to assessing students formatively, these 3D images and hotspot tasks provide a chance for students who may be anxious about the lab environment to explore these areas virtually first. This helps to minimise the risk of students being overwhelmed by the new space. Pairing the input with the virtual tours and, crucially, the chance to check knowledge builds confidence for all students, helping them feel well-prepared and knowledgeable about the lab environments before they even cross the threshold.

Resources

Previous blog post on 360 images

Theasys