Research

Work is currently underway on a prototype of a combination of an augmented reality app for HoloLens2 and a Rhino Grasshopper plugin that enables bilateral communication between these instances via the User Datagram Protocol (UDP). This communication is used to mirror geometry data such as meshes and polylines from Rhino Grasshopper as holograms to the HoloLens2 app in real time. While this already enables the evaluation of geometries at any scale, parametric commands from the augmented reality environment can be sent back to the Rhino Grasshopper instance to manipulate the Grasshopper script and thus also the geometries.

Participants: Faculty 3, Institute for Structural Design

The aim of the interdisciplinary NiceWay project is the joint investigation, planning and design of urban and movement spaces on school routes with children and young people as well as other relevant experts and stakeholder groups. Using various methods and technical aids, such as immersive technologies, school routes are examined, design proposals are developed, implemented and visualised, and tested and discussed with the user group.

Participants: Faculty 3, Institute for Sustainable Urbanism

A people-centred streetscape design that encourages walking and cycling and thus ensures greater sustainability.

Participants: Faculty 3, Institute for Sustainable Urbanism

As part of the "LEBAZ" project, a learning factory for circular battery cell production is being created at the Institute for Machine Tools and Production Engineering at the TU Braunschweig, which will transfer SU expertise to training and further education and make it accessible to a broad target group (industry, students, trainees, citizens).

The core of the project is the implementation of a digital learning platform that combines real production processes with virtual learning paths and thus links practical work processes with digital learning modules; the project is currently in the technical development phase. A mixed reality application is intended to offer learners more practical training through immersion and gamification.

The learning platform aims to create a productive teaching/learning environment in which technical and methodological skills are taught both theoretically and practically in training courses and seminars.

In the long term, LEBAZ aims to promote sustainability in battery cell production by combining a real learning factory and digital, possibly mixed-reality-supported learning programmes - one success factor will be the involvement of all relevant stakeholders.

Participants: Faculty 4, Institute for Machine Tools and Production Engineering

Co-SpACE# is a hybrid teaching/learning space at the IDS that uses immersive technology for collaborative, multimodal teaching and learning. The content of different courses can be transferred to the Co-SpACE# and made more "tangible" for students.

The aim is to support learners in collaborative processes in an innovative way. The hybrid space was therefore designed with a modular structure that allows students to access and manipulate interlinked virtual and real elements. Among other things, script texts, videos and virtual experiments serve as teaching/learning resources. Students can also use virtual tools to interact in the room and support verbal exchanges with virtual sketches, for example, or annotate real objects virtually together. Mathematical exercises can also be better understood using linked "tangible" simulations and solved collaboratively in the room. The room also offers training in measurement processes on real and virtual test set-ups using an intelligent assistance function.

Participants: Faculty 4, Institute for Machine Tools and Production Engineering

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are linked to the concept of perspectivity in many ways. After all, they are digital (educational) media that bring virtual objects and environments "in front of the user's eyes". This is done in different technical ways and with different media and content design tools. In this way, they can influence what and how we see and, in the case of the subject of history, also shape historical knowledge and thinking about the past. However, we still know too little about how learners acquire perspectives generated by AR and VR apps, especially in the context of historical-political education. In an exploratory case study with a mixed-method approach, we are therefore investigating how students acquire perspectivity through these applications using exemplary AR and VR offerings on the history of Anne Frank. We understand perspectivity in such XR applications as a multidimensional construct that encompasses both the media offer and media use. You can find more information about the project here.

Participants: Leibniz-Institut für Bildungsmedien | Georg Eckert Institute (GEI) & Faculty 6, Institute of History

Video vignettes have been used successfully for some time to professionalise student teachers for subject-specific diagnostics in the natural sciences. 360° videos in VR offer many advantages compared to conventional video formats: Several sensory channels are addressed in the authentic (re)scenarios and learners can make decisions independently, which results in a highly immersive experience of a situation and complex issues can be made more tangible for learners. At the same time, this poses challenges, as the large number of options for focussing creates a high cognitive load and can overwhelm users. In order to tap into the potential and effectiveness of 360° videos for educational processes, a deeper analysis of their application and effectiveness is required.

In the interdisciplinary research project Lab360, immersive 360-degree videos depicting authentic experimentation phases by pupils are therefore produced, interactively edited and enriched with didactic elements. In courses of the practical phase and in the project volume, these are processed by Master's teacher training students in GHR 300 in the subjects of biology, chemistry and physics and the use and effectiveness of the videos are evaluated. In particular, the analysis results and the interest and motivation of the students will be focussed on. Based on the evaluation results, the multimedia learning scenarios will be revised and made available as a prototype for other subjects.

Project goals

• Production of high-quality, practical 360° instructional videos for science teacher training (biology, chemistry, physics),
• Increasing understanding of experimental processes and typical student hurdles in experimental problem solving through immersive learning scenarios,
• Promoting diagnostic and reflective competences of prospective and practising teachers with regard to experimental problem solving,
• Expansion of the research base at TU Braunschweig for the use of virtual reality and 360° videos in educational research.
• Project period & funding

The project is funded in the period from 01 June 2025 - 31 March 2026 by the Research Institute of Teacher Education at TU Braunschweig in the open funding category for particularly innovative projects.

Participants: PD Dr Dagmar Hilfert-Rüppell & Dirk Bauer Faculty 6, Institute for Didactics of Natural Sciences

Leander H. Mecklenburg, science-learning

As part of the 360°BNE project, various steps were taken to develop teaching materials and carry out targeted evaluation and basic research into possible learning effects. With regard to the learning content, 360° videos on sustainable agriculture were created and are currently still being published. 360° videos were then subjected to an evaluation in a comparison group design, which also focussed on the learning effects and correlations with other variables. Finally, the project also aims to transfer findings into practice, which is why selected teacher training programmes were also carried out.

The funding from the Telekom Foundation was awarded to Alexander Büssing as a three-year fellowship in STEM subject didactics. The project started on 1 January 2021 at Leibniz Universität Hannover and was interrupted by a one-year substitute professorship. The project was transferred to TU Braunschweig on 1 January 2024 and will end here.

Participants: Faculty 6, Institute for Didactics of Natural Sciences