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01/07/2022 | The Labs for Innovative Teaching are taking off!

 From 360° labs to virtual lecture halls - with virtual reality, augmented reality and 360° technology, the Labs for Innovative Teaching are taking academic teaching into new dimensions.

The Labs for Innovative Teaching have started their work and are taking off. At Philipps University in Marburg and Justus Liebig University in Giessen, teaching staff can now experiment with and develop innovative teaching concepts. From 360° labs to virtual lecture halls - with virtual reality, augmented reality and 360° technologies, we are taking academic teaching into new dimensions.

Goals of the Labs for Innovative Teaching

The goal of both labs is to offer teaching staff and members of the universities the opportunity to make virtual reality usable for their own teaching, to experiemnt with the technology and to identify and develop the benefits but also the challenges of virtual reality for their own teaching concept.

The team from Giessen and the team from Marburg work closely together across the universities. Workshops, collegial event formats, conference contributions, consultation services, the development of the labs and the conception and implementation of virtual teaching environments comprise the joint offerings. Each location benefits from the perspective and expertise of the other in order to be able to respond more precisely to the needs of the teachers on site.

Open Labs: open workshop for modern technologies in university teaching

One special element is the format of the so called Open Labs. Similar to a makerspace, i.e. an open workplace for modern technologies, the doors of the labs are open at fixed opening hours for teaching stuff and interested people from the respective university. No prior knowledge or ready-made idea is necessary. Using the hardware is free of charge and without obligation. For questions or an introduction to the available devices, the teams are on hand at their respective locations and look forward to your visit. Various VR headsets are available and can be used for free. In addition, the labs each have so-called workstations - gaming PCs that are equipped with appropriate software (e.g. Unity, Unreal Engine, Blender, 3Spin Learning) for the creation of individual VR projects and on which you can work for free.

Services in Marburg and Gießen

In addition to the common portfolio of services, each lab offers special and location-specific services. The Marburg Lab cooperates with the XSpace Gamelab and uses their premises to concentrate an even broader range of future-oriented technologies in one place. This has resulted in the mobile VR Experience. Members of the Philipps-Universität Marburg have the opportunity to rent a wide variety of VR headsets for individual demonstration and application scenarios. The team would also be pleased to come to your department or introduce you and your students to the virtual world. Please contact the head of the Lab for Innovative Teaching in Marburg, Ramin Siegmund (). 

The VR rental station has been set up as a site-specific service of the Giessen Lab. The Lab has five Oculus Quest and so far twelve Pico Neo 2, which will be expanded by ten more VR headsets in autumn 2022. The headsets can be rented individually or for entire seminars. Hygiene and infection control are top priority!

Virtual Reality: Lending Station at JLU Gießen

Our UVC desinfection boxes ensure that the headsets are completely desinfected within a few minutes through UV irradiation. We use fleece masks to ensure that no skin particles or sweat stick to the masks. This makes it possible to provide the headsets to courses with a large number of students in groups. With the offer of our VR lending station, we want to break down barriers and make VR technology experienceable in teaching. We want to encourage teachers to become more aware of the topic and show them innovative ways of using new technologies in teaching.

The VR lending station will start in July 2022. If you have further questions, would like to come around or would like to learn more about the Lab, please contact the head of the Lab for Innovative Teaching in Giessen, Maraike Büst () - We look forward to your visit!