AR & VR Technologies with David Dixon from UniSC

In this episode we talk to David Dixon, Senior Creative Developer, Visualisation in the Centre for Support and Advancement of Learning and Teaching (CSALT) at the University of the Sunshine Coast. David discusses the innovative application of immersive technologies—such as virtual reality, mixed reality, and large-scale 3D visualisation in the Cave—in enhancing teaching and learning across a variety of disciplines. He provides examples of a range of projects, including midwifery training simulations, virtual art galleries, and citizen science experiences, all designed to facilitate authentic, accessible, and engaging learning environments.

This conversation offers valuable perspectives on the practical integration of emerging technologies in higher education, with real-world examples demonstrating how these tools can support discipline-specific pedagogy and improve student outcomes. For those interested in the future of educational technology and its role in advancing teaching practice, this episode provides thoughtful reflection and expert insights.

https://www.usc.edu.au/study/life-at-unisc/facilities/visualisation-and-simulation

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/explainers/virtual-production/what-is-virtual-production

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/what-is-photogrammetry/

Transcript

Natalie McMaster
Hi listeners. My name's Natalie McMaster and I am running this podcast for AARE for the technology and Learning SIG. Today we have with us, David Dixon, who works for the University of the Sunshine Coast. So welcome, David.

David Dixon
Thank you very much for having me today.

Natalie McMaster
Fantastic. So I guess we'll start by asking you to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit more about your role at the university.

David Dixon
I work for the University of the Sunshine Coast as a Senior Creative Developer for visualisation and simulation, and the department that I work in is called C-SALT, which is the Centre for support and advancement of learning and teaching. My role is to work with academic and professional staff and developing immersive or interactive learning and teaching resources. This ranges from large format immersive displays to VR headsets and the use of mixed reality. I primarily develop in unity and Unreal Engine which are used in the game and film industry and what we actually do is repurpose this technology, for educational use cases, and it allows the use of real time 3D graphics and interactive functionality. My background is actually in real time 3D graphics and animation, and I've previously taught game art and animation subjects at the university.

Natalie McMaster
Oh fantastic. So I guess one of my questions would be around sort of the facilities that we do have at the University of the Sunshine Coast and those that you are involved with as part of your role.

David Dixon
So the main facility that I work with is called ‘The Cave’ which is a 320 degree, 80 panel immersive display wall, located at the Sippy Downs Campus and the primary focus of that space is learning and teaching. Academics regularly hold lectures there which utilise 3D technology, which we've developed in house for them to meet their course criteria. In addition to this at the Moreton Bay campus, there's also smaller array of screens, which also 3D enabled which are used in the same manner. Though those are the two main ones, but we also have content that's developed for ‘The Cave’, which we output to VR headsets and online as 360 videos, so the students can access it even if they're not on campus. And it really depends on the type of resource the academic is after as to our our choice of what type of technology is used and the format that it's displayed in.

Natalie McMaster
Okay fantastic. That's quite a lot of work by the sounds of things. So, are there particular advantages on using, you know, a space like ‘The Cave’ over more sort of traditional formats, you know, like a lecture theatre or just a normal teaching space?

David Dixon
So I had the advantage I see with using ‘The Cave’ it's very collaborative space to bring people. And everyone can experience the content at the same time. Seeing it's a closed off room it really lets people focus on the information that's being presented. The screens also 3D enabled, which brings additional depth perception and the sense of immersion when looking at the learning and teaching presentations that are being presented.

Natalie McMaster
And when you say it's a closed in sort of space, can you just describe that a little bit for us?

David Dixon
So it's within the H2 building. Inside there, there's another small cylindrical room which ‘The Cave’ is housed in. And we've also got a breakout area outside there.
So typically the academics will take in a group of students and close the doors off, dim the lights, and then everyone can focus on the presentation, and then they'll kind of rotate those groups of students in and out.

Natalie McMaster

What are the projects that you're currently involved in or have worked on recently at the university?

David Dixon
So at the moment I'm working on a midwifery VR training simulation with associate Professor Terry Downer, who is the discipline lead for midwifery. And as part of that artefact, the students will be able to do activities like measurements of the abdomen, help patient which is feeling the position of the foetus and also measuring the foetal heart rate. So one of the main advantages of developing a simulation like this, as we can randomise different scenarios in terms of how the avatar looks, the position of the foetus and havering different heart rates for different stages of development. And the simulation automatically will evaluate the user throughout the tasks and then provide them feedback as they go.

Natalie McMaster
Oh, that sounds really interesting. I know when I've done some things in ‘The Cave’ it's been around sort of that primary schooling focus that I work in. We've had students having a look at, you know, the solar system and those types of things.

David Dixon
Yeah. So this will be our first VR interactive scenario that we've developed before.
Previously we've mainly done kind of linear presentations which are more like a film or video that you can watch. It'll be quite interesting to see how the students react to doing kind of a simulated training experience of something which they'd normally be doing in the lab.

Natalie McMaster
When it comes to students, do you have any involvement with students themselves as part of your role?

David Dixon
So not typically, but we did have a group of work integrated learning students from the design programme work with me last year. And they learnt how to develop content for ‘The Cave’ and as part of that we developed a game that involved them using motion capture devices to interact with the scene. So that was kind of an experimental thing. And yeah, they're really enjoyed that. They were also introduced to photogrammetry, work flows. And photogrammetry is a process of taking hundreds of photos which get processed and sticks together. It works really well for capturing things like environments, props and people. After that process has happened, the scanned data gets optimised and then it can be put into applications such as Unreal Engine to make up the environment or used as part of the process for making animated characters. We also walked around the campus looking for objects that might be suitable to be captured and added them into virtual scenes, and then went through the process of putting them into ‘The Cave’.

Natalie McMaster
And so with those types of things that the students have put together with you. And you know, as you said, they were a bit sort of experimental. Are there plans then to try and utilise that technology in some of the teaching content in courses?

David Dixon
Yes, that's the main idea. As part of having them as well as students, they get to develop work flows and test things out, which I might not necessarily have time to do as part of my role, and we do that testing and experimentation and based on the results we get, we can, in the future integrate them into part of the work flows that we use when we're developing resources for the academics.

Natalie McMaster
So is there any new technologies or work flows that you're super excited about or currently exploring?

David Dixon
So new tech, which I'm excited about, is the use of virtual production, which is a technique used in film making that combines physical and virtual elements to create movies and TV shows. It uses led screens to display computer generated imagery as a backdrop actors. So as part of this process, we did something similar with the work experience students and they got to design some virtual environments. But there's also a lot of planning and iteration which goes on before filming would begin.

Natalie McMaster
And so how is that different to say the sort of green screen?
Is it more just because it's a 3D um ability to have that sort of virtual background or?

David Dixon
It lets you actually see what the actual environment is around you and it helps also light the people there. So when they're filming them all that light is bouncing off the screens and actually lighting the actors more accurately than you'd be able to get with a green screen. But in the learning teaching context we're using that same technology to make learning and teaching artefacts. You could kind of envision in the future recording lectures in those spaces and actually having the academic standing there talking to their learning and teaching material.

Natalie McMaster
Oh, that sounds exciting. You know, my initial thoughts are things like outdoor ed. There could be sort of that virtual world that they inside of while they're talking about things.

David Dixon
That's right. There's a project which I'm currently working on with Vikki Schaffer, who's the senior lecturer in tourism and events, using similar types of immersive technologies in Unreal Engine. And that's for educating people with citizen science. And as part of that project, we've created two scenarios which are virtual environments that actually offer training. And one of the scenes takes you out into the Australian night Outback, down a river, and the viewers need to identify and count different animals that are within the scene. And the next one is like a kind of underwater environment near a shipwreck. And as part of that, there's a whale encounter. And when using the artefact, the viewers typically take out their phones and try and take a picture of the underside of the whale tail. And the idea behind this is to provide opportunities for people with diverse abilities who may not actually be able to go out into the field but still want to experience that kind of activity in real life. And the feedback towards this has been really positive and I'm looking forward to see what type of outcomes we get.

Natalie McMaster
My last question is just about any of your plans going forward in this space?

David Dixon
So we're currently in a future planning phase regarding refreshing equipment and what type of the facilities the staff would like to have available in the future. And as part of this, we're going to be doing a university wide survey, for both academic and professional staff to get their thoughts about the direction that we'd like to head in. And some of the ideas we've had, have been around VR labs and classrooms.  We've actually seen a big increase of interest from education, especially in the healthcare space.   And the main thought has been as our physical campus has become full, we can see that there will be a need for virtual training more and more using technology such as VR and interactive online systems that can simulate the experience you would normally be doing in person.

Natalie McMaster
It sounds exciting and I know sort of from my perspective, working with primary schools, we've got schools now who are using VR and AR technologies in the classroom to teach students about particular concepts or topics, and I guess it just makes sense that, if they're used to that kind of learning experience to then be able to still have that on offer when they move into university and looking at learning, you know, things that are more complex using a similar technology.

David Dixon
Absolutely. Yeah, it makes sense that they'd be introduced that to that type of tech. Yeah. And then follow one with it. When they move into the university space so they were already familiar with it.

Natalie McMaster
Was there anything else that you would like to talk about?

David Dixon
So I’ll just mention a research project that I've been in as part of my Masters thesis and it's been around reducing cognitive load in assembly tasks. And as part of that project we were comparing traditional instructional medium such as paper based instructions to using mixed reality.

And I was exploring if mixed reality could provide a cognitive processing benefit through optimising the amount of working memory that's required. And as part of this, we created a flatpack furniture task for the participants to do. And one group used the HoloLens base instructions, which is mixed reality, and the other group used the paper based and we compared the results. So the real benefit that I can see with mixed reality is that it actually allows you to bring 3D virtual objects into the room with you. So unlike VR, where you're kind of in a closed off space, mixed reality allows you to bring digital elements that look like they're actually part of the environment.

Natalie McMaster
Oh, that sounds like an exciting piece of research. I'll be really interested to hear more about it when you're finished.

David Dixon
Yes, perhaps we can talk about this more in a future podcast.

Natalie McMaster
So are there any other projects that you're currently working on that you'd like to share with us today?

David Dixon
Sure, I'm working on a project with Min Zhao who is a senior lecturer in genomics and as part of this where making a visualisation around DNA protein structures. So in this particular one, we're looking at amino acid chain which grows and then folds down to become a protein structure. And this will then be compared to a visualisation where there's been a DNA mutation which shows the chain growing, but instead of forming into a protein structure, it breaks apart. And this is the first type of project which we've done in the scientific viz space. So we're keeping it simple to begin with, and this project is kind of like a proof of concept, and then we'll go into developing more complex things in the future.

Natalie McMaster
That doesn't complex and so does the academic have to spend quite a bit of time with you working through what it is that there after?

David Dixon
Yes. Typically when we're developing projects, we work with the academic in creating a project scope document and there anywhere from between 5 and 20 pages. And we go into depth around the requirements of the learning material, and figure out the best use of technology. So that when we're actually developing it, it meets all those outcomes which the academic is looking for.

Natalie McMaster
Great. And were there any other further projects?

David Dixon
Sure. I'm also working on a project with Leah Barclay, who is a senior lecturer in design. And we're creating a virtual art gallery. So for this project, we've done a 3D scan of the art gallery on the Sippy Downs campus and this will be changed into a 3D model which is suitable for viewing online or in VR. And as part of this artefact, it will be possible to walk around the space and view media such as students folios, wall mounted artwork, along with visual and audio. And it will be possible to change the lighting and the floating will configuration in the space to match how it's presented in the real gallery, depending on the use case.  So the students work will be digitised and displayed in the space and the idea is each year there will be a new version created which will turn into amazing showcase of student work over time.

Natalie McMaster
So is the virtual showcase that you would be designing, would that be then something that could be kept and used again over time?

David Dixon
It would be something which we're planning on keeping a new version each year and that way, depending on how students could come back and look at what it was actually like at that point in time.

Natalie McMaster

 It also gives people who you know are unable to come on to the Sippy campus to access and have a look physically through the gallery.

David Dixon
That's correct, yes.

Natalie McMaster
So yeah, fantastic.

Natalie McMaster
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for your time today David. You've brought up some really interesting things that are happening at the University of the Sunshine Coast, and I'm sure our listeners can have a look at ‘The Cave’ to find out a bit more information about, you know what that is and how it works.

David Dixon
Fantastic and yes, I'll provide some links which your listeners can look at and get further information around the topic of Vis and Sim in Education.

Natalie McMaster
Fantastic. Thank you for your time today David. Bye for now.

David Dixon
You're very welcome. Thank you for having me.