Virtual Christmas party in the 'Edu-Lunch-Talk': An insight into the immersive world of TriCAT Spaces

With the monthly "Edu-Lunch-Talk" offers MeinBildungsraum.de (MBR), the digital infrastructure currently being developed for the central mapping and networking of education in Germany, offers the approximately 40 funding projects involved the opportunity to exchange ideas on interim results and overarching topics in a relaxed setting. On the occasion of the upcoming Christmas celebrations, the digital lunch meeting in December was given a special "garment". The last meeting of the year that is coming to an end took place on December 14, 2023 in a virtual "winter wonderland" in the "TriCAT Spaces" The CODIP project “Connecting a Virtual Immersive 3D Learning Platform to the NBP using the domain example of an educational provider (AVILAB2)” The event, organized and carried out by AVILAB2, offered the actors from the MBR projects and the office of the project sponsor “VDI/VDE-IT” an immersive Christmas setting to get to know the social virtual reality software better and to exchange ideas with the AVILAB2 project team and with each other.

Figure 1: The participants come together in the virtual “main room” and form groups for the escape rooms

After the participants were briefly welcomed at the beginning and introduced to the basic functions of "TriCAT Spaces" (see Figure 1), they were already faced with their first challenge. In a specially designed, Christmas-decorated escape room (see Figure 2), they immersed themselves in the history of virtual reality (VR). In small groups, they were required to use the various interaction functions in the software in a targeted manner in order to find various hidden clues, decode messages and combine all the knowledge gained in a targeted manner. This enabled them to solve puzzles, open new rooms and learn more about the gradual development of VR technology. At the same time, they learned how to use the VR software step by step and in a playful, immersive way. Although the time required to solve all the puzzles and thus the "journey" from the past to the current state of development of VR had to be more than halved due to the fixed framework of the lunch meeting, both groups of explorers solved at least half of the four rooms. One of the two groups even managed to completely "break out" into the present. After the time was up, the escape room leaders opened all the doors so that no one got "lost" in the virtual VR journey through time. All participants clearly enjoyed the playful journey of discovery.

Figure 2: Participants search the virtual escape room for clues

In the "Universe of the Future", which gave an outlook on current and future VR developments, all participants finally came together for group work in which they assigned their projects to various subject areas of the MBR funding program and the education sectors. Their results were then compared in plenary with a classification that had been prepared in advance by the AVILAB2 employees. At the end of the "regular" part of the Edu-Lunch Talk, which usually ends after an hour, the organizers briefly evaluated the event with the participants and gave them an outlook on the additional offering that began afterwards (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Event director Jonathan Dyrna (Technical University of Dresden) introduces participants to the “Market of Opportunities”

Here, the participants gathered for a “market of opportunities”, which offered them three different options for a maximum of one hour to delve deeper into the AVILAB2 project content and to exchange ideas with one another. At the first stand, they had the opportunity to talk to employees of the company "TriCAT" to discuss, for example, the potential uses and perspectives of the software and to learn more about the media didactic challenges of its use. At the second stand, participants from the MBR projects exchanged views on current questions relating to their current tasks and problems. The third virtual stand was an exploratory workshop in which participants could actively try out and learn the functions and elements for designing the virtual spaces under the guidance of the AVILAB2 team. This meant that the actors involved switched from their perspective as participants to that of the user experience designers. The event ended after around 1:45 hours and everyone involved wished each other a Merry Christmas. The very successful virtual Christmas party has definitely increased their and our anticipation of the holidays.

Authors: Richard Joos and Jonathan Dyrna

Current publications

Dyrna, J., Lorenz, R., Galarce Miranda, C., Heitz, R., Köhler, T. (2023). Social VR as an approach to foster collaboration among scientists and educators within the networked infrastructure for education. E-learning & Education, Special Issue.

Funding information: