Facilitating student and staff engagement across multiple offshore campuses for transnational education using an immersive video augmented learning platform

Abstract

Opportunities in transnational education have been growing across the higher education sector. The incentive for institutions to explore opening offshore satellite campuses includes access to more students and building the institutions reputation across the globe. A number of risks are also associated with transnational education, especially in terms of quality. It is important that students across all campuses receive the same high standard of education. That is, students at offshore campuses should not be placed at a disadvantage compared to students studying at the institutions main campus. This paper explores the possibility of providing students from offshore campuses better access to teaching staff from the institutions main campus. An immersive video augmented platform called iSee is used to simultaneously connect students from Singapore and Malaysia with teaching staff in Wollongong. The students undertook an exam revision session using video avatars in a virtual lecture theatre. The pilot showcased the opportunities of implementing this technology to improve student engagement and reduce academic workload. It also reinforced the need for more research in the transnational education field to ensure the same graduate outcomes are being achieved across campuses. Abstract-Opportunities in transnational education have been growing across the higher education sector. The incentive for institutions to explore opening offshore satellite campuses includes access to more students and building the institutions reputation across the globe. A number of risks are also associated with transnational education, especially in terms of quality. It is important that students across all campuses receive the same high standard of education. That is, students at offshore campuses should not be placed at a disadvantage compared to students studying at the institutions main campus. This paper explores the possibility of providing students from offshore campuses better access to teaching staff from the institutions main campus. An immersive video augmented platform called iSee is used to simultaneously connect students from Singapore and Malaysia with teaching staff in Wollongong. The students undertook an exam revision session using video avatars in a virtual lecture theatre. The pilot showcased the opportunities of implementing this technology to improve student engagement and reduce academic workload. It also reinforced the need for more research in the transnational education field to ensure the same graduate outcomes are being achieved across campuses.

Exploring Student Interest of Online Peer Assisted Learning Using Mixed-Reality Technology

“…In particular Q2 indicates that the platform is effective for verbal communication, one of the key limitations in [3]. The responses show that the participants believed that V-PASS provided a good sense of presence, allowed collaboration to occur and was an effective way of teaching course related content, providing some agreement with the findings in [10][11][12]. This does provide some confidence in using iSee to trial a transnational V-PASS session if a way to encourage student participation could be found.…”

“…The study found students thought iSee was easier to use due to its similarities with gaming and that team collaboration was better due to the focus of face to face communication. This was followed up by a number of other studies [10][11][12] that found that the video avatar substantially contributed to the acceptance and quality of engagement online; and provided a mechanism to facilitate transnational education. Therefore, this pilot study investigates if iSee is a suitable technology for running a virtual PASS (V-PASS) scheme at a traditional face to face university that could then be expanded to include students from other trans-national satellite campuses.…”