What if you could step into the world of a movie? What if you could not only experience the story with the characters, but also change how a scene was filmed?
Through virtual reality, this is the opportunity Matthew Solomon gives his students.
Solomon, a professor of film, television and media in LSA, has developed a course in which his film students can take a hands-on role in capturing a scene from the 1941 classic “Citizen Kane.” When students don a VR headset, they are transported into the film and can move the camera and change elements of the set to capture a scene completely different than it was originally filmed.
“For years and years, I’ve always tried to ask my students to think about how things would look different if the camera was placed differently, if the editing was done differently, if the sound was different,” Solomon said. “But here, they actually have a chance to really do it themselves and compare and think about what kind of difference cinematic technique makes for how we see a scene, so that’s been really exciting.”
Solomon and Vincent Longo, lecturer I in film, television and media, originally pitched the idea for the course to the Duderstadt Center’s Emerging Technologies Group.
The center includes a Visualization Studio where faculty and students have access to extended-reality and VR headsets and equipment. The Emerging Technologies Group provides consultations with faculty members interested in incorporating XR/VR technology into their classrooms.
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The University of Michigan has seen a boom in XR/VR technology since launching its XR Initiative in the fall of 2019. It is now a core focus of the university’s Center for Academic Innovation, which is designing and developing powerful XR learning experiences for residential and online students with faculty partners at schools and colleges across campus and Michigan Medicine.
Jeremy Nelson, senior director of creative studios at the CAI, said the center is dedicated to promoting thoughtful innovation and experimentation, alongside research into impact, to enhance teaching and learning.
“We’re helping faculty create equitable, lifelong learning experiences for students and learners around the world. XR technologies unlock powerful new ways to achieve learning objectives in courses of all kinds,” Nelson said.
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The center also supports broader campus learning and innovation using XR technologies. CAI offers more than 100 VR headsets for instructional use and access to a full virtual production studio as part of online course development.
The center has collaborated with 17 schools across the Ann Arbor campus and funded 30 extended-reality projects. More than 30 classes offered this fall will use CAI’s XR resources. Nelson said students have demonstrated an eagerness to learn and engage with material in a virtual environment.
A variety of applications
Solomon said the technology has engaged his film students and helped them analyze film production in an innovative manner.
“For many of (the students), it’s one of their first experiences with VR, and I think they’re inevitably more motivated to think about an old movie through this lens than they might have been just sitting back and watching it on the screen,” Solomon said.
Solomon is using XR technology in another class this fall, “The Big City: Lost and Found in XR.” Co-taught by Sara Eskandari, adjunct lecturer in arts engineering with the College of Engineering’s Center for Entrepreneurship, the course will task students with reimagining a lost 1928 film, “The Big City.”
With no copies of the movie remaining today, students will reference photographs and use XR technology to generate a historical re-creation of the film.
“These students can join the team and continue building that space, which we are envisioning as an immersive lesson, not only about lost films, but also about lost Black talent, because this scene that we’re trying to re-create was a 1928 film scene that featured dozens of African American extras who were uncredited, whose identities are largely unknown,” Solomon said.
“And my feeling was that an immersive VR application is the best way to try and share this history and make it more meaningful to audiences in the present day.”
Eskandari, who also works as an XR software developer with Emerging Technologies Group, will lead another undergraduate course this fall titled “Intro to Entrepreneurial Design.”
The course will introduce prototyping tools and guide hopeful entrepreneurs through the development pipeline, from conceptualization and client outreach to grant proposals and presentations. Students will learn how to develop virtual reality experiences, simulations and tools to help enhance each stage of the process.
“Anything that gets someone excited about class material is worth it. Period. It is so hard to keep people engaged, especially after COVID, especially with younger students with shorter attention spans that we’ve seen fostered from having the internet at your fingertips,” Eskandari said.
Eskandari has advised faculty members from several colleges and units across campus on ways to incorporate XR/VR technology into their classrooms to enhance student learning. She encourages anyone interested to schedule a consultation to talk through ideas and develop a curriculum.
“Anybody can get into VR or XR in general because it’s such an interdisciplinary field,” Eskandari said. “Every field can benefit from it in some way. Any time you need to look at something to understand it, that could be in VR and be very beneficial in VR.”
Studying the body through a headset
One of the courses Eskandari helped advise, “The Art of Anatomy,” will be available this fall in the School of Kinesiology. The undergraduate course, made possible by a grant from U-M’s Arts Initiative, will be co-taught by Melissa Gross, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, associate professor of movement science in the School of Kinesiology, and associate professor of art and design in the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design; and Jenny Gear, lecturer I in history of art in LSA and lecturer I in kinesiology in the School of Kinesiology.
Students will use VR headsets to analyze bones and other human body parts. From 16th-century drawings to 18th-century wax models, students have examined representations of the body for centuries, and XR/VR tech is the latest way for them to become critical observers and analysts of anatomical models, Gear said.
The idea for the class came about during one of Gross’ study-abroad trips where she took students to a crypt in Rome where Capuchin monks used their brethren’s bones to decorate an ossuary for sacred meditation. Gross said she realized it could be beneficial to somehow 3D print or virtually replicate the bones for students back on campus to engage with the material.
“The goal was not just to tap into their creativity, but also to look closely at these anatomical models and for these STEM students to move past the mindset of ‘memorize landmarks, take a test, get an A, move on,’ but to actually engage with the bones as objects worthy of close looking,” Gross said.
Deb Lee, clinical assistant professor of nursing in the School of Nursing, used funding and support from CAI to implement XR/VR technology that helps nursing students master fundamental skills in her course “Transforming Nursing Education with VR Platforms.”
Headsets help guide students through procedures by placing 3D overlays of veins, bones and other internal structures onto physical manikins. With the ability to repeat and practice procedures multiple times with the headsets, students learn to start intravenous lines, place nasogastric tubes, insert Foley catheters and master other crucial nursing skills.
“From the students’ standpoint, they like it instead of just being in the classroom. So, it definitely enhances the engagement and satisfaction for the students. … And I think it’s really extending our capabilities as faculty, too,” Lee said.
Another XR program allows nursing students to prioritize patient needs by managing four different virtual patients at once. With the current nursing faculty shortage, Lee said, XR technology has been instrumental in student success as it has reduced faculty needs by approximately 75%.
“I think some of the faculty are nervous to implement (XR/VR technology), but really, the students are pretty patient and willing to try, and they want to learn this new technology because it’s ultimately going to be in their future at some level. So, I’m hoping we get more and more faculty to be willing to adapt to it,” Lee said.
Creating interactive experiences
Austin Yarger, lecturer II in electrical engineering and computer science in the College of Engineering, teaches several courses that incorporate XR/VR technology, including his capstone course, “Extended Reality for Social Impact.”
Yarger first interacted with VR through U-M’s student game-development organization WolverineSoft. As he watched the technology evolve, Yarger said, he saw how it could be applied beyond gaming to help people and aid in real-world problems.
“We want to try and have social impact in some way, and that leads to just wild and unique and interesting applications that you wouldn’t really expect,” Yarger said.
In the course, students form groups and develop their own app or program in which they apply their knowledge of gaming engines to create an XR/VR game that would have a social impact.
Students have created a wide array of interactive experiences from VR fitness games to re-creations of the International Space Station, in which people wearing headsets interact by jumping, ducking and reaching out to grab virtual objects.
One of the projects that stands out to Yarger was created by Nithisha Kumar, a student who went on to serve as the course assistant for several semesters. Kumar’s mobile app aimed to help medical professionals motivate patients losing movement in parts of their face to perform exercises. One of the app’s “mini games” encourages patients to practice raising their eyebrows to make a virtual smiley face jump over obstacles.
“Overall, our mission is to train up the students on these bleeding edge technologies to convince them — give them the hope, give them the spirit — that they can do really impactful things with these technologies,” Yarger said. “U-M Ann Arbor has an ever evolving, ever improving ecosystem and community for this kind of stuff, and my hope is that more people discover what’s available to them.”
