Learning
Jane Rolph, Headteacher at Chapel Break Infant School, Norfolk said; “It has created another dimension for children's experiences and learning, bringing ideas and imagination to life. The impact on our childrens' writing, speaking and listening has been immense."
Bridget O'Brien, Head of Drama at Caister High School, Specialist Performing Arts College, Norfolk said; "The students have thoroughly enjoyed being able to see themselves appear immediately in another environment and explore the ways they can interact with the scene in the moment."
Bridget O'Brien, Head of Drama at Caister High School, Specialist Performing Arts College, Norfolk said; "The students have thoroughly enjoyed being able to see themselves appear immediately in another environment and explore the ways they can interact with the scene in the moment."
Experiential Learning Environments
Xenodu installations are being used for training and education as immersive media-driven learning tools to support personal and social development by various organisations, ranging from schools, colleges and universities to the BBC and the NHS (National Health Service, UK).
By providing an audio-visual resource of experiential learning environments, our installations have proven effective in engaging participants with a fun and interactive approach to personal and social skills development with noticeable improvements particularly in participants’ confidence and self-esteem.
Positive, measurable effects on learning outcomes have consistently been achieved using our installations, as well as providing support for other subjects within educational programmes.
Outcomes for Learners
• Developing confidence and self-esteem by working with and in front of peers.
• Gives every participant a chance to shine.
• Highlights and celebrates personal goals and achievements.
• Offers participants the opportunity to put forward their own point of view.
By providing an audio-visual resource of experiential learning environments, our installations have proven effective in engaging participants with a fun and interactive approach to personal and social skills development with noticeable improvements particularly in participants’ confidence and self-esteem.
Positive, measurable effects on learning outcomes have consistently been achieved using our installations, as well as providing support for other subjects within educational programmes.
Outcomes for Learners
• Developing confidence and self-esteem by working with and in front of peers.
• Gives every participant a chance to shine.
• Highlights and celebrates personal goals and achievements.
• Offers participants the opportunity to put forward their own point of view.
BBC Virtual Newsreading
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BBC Suffolk - Virtual Newsreading
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Virtual Newsreading experiences created exclusively for BBC East, BBC Suffolk and BBC Northern Ireland have featured in our installations for public outreach at a wide range of public events and spaces including the annual Royal Norfolk Show and Suffolk Show.
Members of the public and local school pupils taking part were given the opportunity to present the news alongside BBC news presenters or present the BBC weather forecast. |
A teacher at Heacham Junior School, King's Lynn, Norfolk said; "It was great for the children to use the technology as it was an experience we would not have been able to provide for ourselves."
Flynn, Age 10 Pupil at Heacham Junior School, King's Lynn, Norfolk said; "I really liked working with the technology - it was amazing what you could do!"
Flynn, Age 10 Pupil at Heacham Junior School, King's Lynn, Norfolk said; "I really liked working with the technology - it was amazing what you could do!"
Personal & Social Skills Learning in Education
Schools, colleges, local education authorities and universities have have used our installations for students' personal and social development with a particular focus on self-awareness, self-control and interpersonal skills on a range of innovative projects.
Virtual Olympics
The 'Just Imagine' project which was developed in partnership with Norfolk County Council Children's Services department and was awarded an Olympics 'Education Inspire Mark' celebrated the power of the imagination to support achievement and aspiration by giving Norfolk school students and their teachers a chance to imagine they were participating in the Olympic Games.
Whilst running along a virtual track, students made their personal pledge, which were based along the values of the Olympic and Paralympic Games – which included courage, respect and determination.
The resulting material was featured publicly on the BBC Big Screen in Norwich and published on a series of DVDs containing more than 1,600 pledges made by students and teachers from schools throughout Norfolk.
Year 8 pupil Tristan at Cliff Park High School in Great Yarmouth, said; "Being involved in 'Just Imagine' has changed my life! I am now more independent. I will be 13 in June and I think it is important that I am able to be a normal person, and do things like everyone else. Now I have confidence to conquer my fears. In fact - I have no more fears! I have become stronger and more determined to achieve in my life. I am now getting higher marks for effort in school. I used to give up easily, but now that is a thing of the past."
Family Learning
Norfolk County Council's Family Learning programme have used our installations in First Schools as part of their Family Literacy courses to explore storyboards, characterisation, creative writing and storytelling through creating virtual backdrops and using props such as masks or puppets and costumes to act out different roles.
Learners enrolled on the family learning workshops to engage with literacy, language and numeracy and created a unique record of their work to take home on DVD. The programmes were designed to enhance parental involvement with children’s learning and development.
Daryl Ackroyd, Learning Manager at Norfolk County Council Family Learning said; "Video special effects is a new and very exciting experience and children and adults have enjoyed the brilliant technology."
Sally Wilson-Town, Headteacher at Costessey Infant School, Norwich said; "The green screen sessions were much enjoyed by all. It would be really good to offer it to parents and children as it would fit in brilliantly with our extended schools work."
Helping Children with Social and Communication Difficulties
Collaborating with the University of York Institute of Mental Health Research and a number of special educational needs schools with children of different ages and levels of intellectual ability, we have developed a range of age-appropriate scenarios specifically for primary school children who experience social and communication difficulties.
The project aims to conduct fundamental research and development on an intervention to improve communication skills, reduce situational anxiety and to explore whether the real-time 'self-observation' effect using the our 'Out-Of-Body' system makes a difference for children’s experiences and outcomes.
The virtual scenarios feature various social and communication cues such as facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, awareness of personal space, understanding emotions, rules of conversation, following instructions, adapting language, disclosing personal information appropriately, understanding jokes and sarcasm, differentiating benign from insulting behaviour and understanding nonliteral or ambiguous meanings.
A key research finding from the study has identified that the learning potential of exposing a child who is self-conscious towards the 'Out-Of-Body' perspective is of particular interest and requires further study to discover the nature and outcome of this experience.
Link to: University of York Institute of Mental Health Research
Virtual Olympics
The 'Just Imagine' project which was developed in partnership with Norfolk County Council Children's Services department and was awarded an Olympics 'Education Inspire Mark' celebrated the power of the imagination to support achievement and aspiration by giving Norfolk school students and their teachers a chance to imagine they were participating in the Olympic Games.
Whilst running along a virtual track, students made their personal pledge, which were based along the values of the Olympic and Paralympic Games – which included courage, respect and determination.
The resulting material was featured publicly on the BBC Big Screen in Norwich and published on a series of DVDs containing more than 1,600 pledges made by students and teachers from schools throughout Norfolk.
Year 8 pupil Tristan at Cliff Park High School in Great Yarmouth, said; "Being involved in 'Just Imagine' has changed my life! I am now more independent. I will be 13 in June and I think it is important that I am able to be a normal person, and do things like everyone else. Now I have confidence to conquer my fears. In fact - I have no more fears! I have become stronger and more determined to achieve in my life. I am now getting higher marks for effort in school. I used to give up easily, but now that is a thing of the past."
Family Learning
Norfolk County Council's Family Learning programme have used our installations in First Schools as part of their Family Literacy courses to explore storyboards, characterisation, creative writing and storytelling through creating virtual backdrops and using props such as masks or puppets and costumes to act out different roles.
Learners enrolled on the family learning workshops to engage with literacy, language and numeracy and created a unique record of their work to take home on DVD. The programmes were designed to enhance parental involvement with children’s learning and development.
Daryl Ackroyd, Learning Manager at Norfolk County Council Family Learning said; "Video special effects is a new and very exciting experience and children and adults have enjoyed the brilliant technology."
Sally Wilson-Town, Headteacher at Costessey Infant School, Norwich said; "The green screen sessions were much enjoyed by all. It would be really good to offer it to parents and children as it would fit in brilliantly with our extended schools work."
Helping Children with Social and Communication Difficulties
Collaborating with the University of York Institute of Mental Health Research and a number of special educational needs schools with children of different ages and levels of intellectual ability, we have developed a range of age-appropriate scenarios specifically for primary school children who experience social and communication difficulties.
The project aims to conduct fundamental research and development on an intervention to improve communication skills, reduce situational anxiety and to explore whether the real-time 'self-observation' effect using the our 'Out-Of-Body' system makes a difference for children’s experiences and outcomes.
The virtual scenarios feature various social and communication cues such as facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, awareness of personal space, understanding emotions, rules of conversation, following instructions, adapting language, disclosing personal information appropriately, understanding jokes and sarcasm, differentiating benign from insulting behaviour and understanding nonliteral or ambiguous meanings.
A key research finding from the study has identified that the learning potential of exposing a child who is self-conscious towards the 'Out-Of-Body' perspective is of particular interest and requires further study to discover the nature and outcome of this experience.
Link to: University of York Institute of Mental Health Research
Medical Simulation Training
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Our ongoing partnership with Surrey and Borders NHS Trust involves the development of the AVATr (Augmented Virtual-reality Avatar in Training) Virtual Patient simulation system that uses virtual humans to train medical practitioners how to be better communicators with patients and colleagues.
This innovative project aims to promote curiosity driven learning in order to build empathetic practice by giving learners a licence to fail and learn from their mistakes in a safe environment through using simulated high-stakes scenarios. This involves the development of authentic virtual characters with believable personalities, diverse points of view, detailed back-stories, family backgrounds and medical histories, all taken from real-world scenarios. |
AVATr - Augmented Virtual-reality Avatar in Training
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Feedback from the continuously evolving NHS programme run with Foundation Year junior doctors has been highly positive which include the following comments;
“Good scenarios which offered provocative discussions…Very helpful in identifying personal targets. Great use of technology and comparisons between various situations. Worthwhile analytical discussions”.
“Excellent scenarios, very good learning chance”.
“Valued the opportunity to practice dealing with difficult patients and scenarios that are directly relevant to working as a doctor”.
“Really useful topic to cover, and well thought out scenario. Lots of good discussion around consent, and helped build confidence...listening to others share some of their experiences of similar patients and how they managed them”.
“Excellent scenarios, very good learning chance”.
“Valued the opportunity to practice dealing with difficult patients and scenarios that are directly relevant to working as a doctor”.
“Really useful topic to cover, and well thought out scenario. Lots of good discussion around consent, and helped build confidence...listening to others share some of their experiences of similar patients and how they managed them”.
BMJ link to - Simulation of complex interviewing skills using virtual patients and immersive technology (Redvers A. et al. 2015)
BJPsych link to - Digitalised remote-delivery of AVATr Simulation in Psychiatry: a unique success in Covid-19 pandemic (Mannali V. et al. 2021)
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