Teaching Online Using 3D Hologram

How does the idea of ​​being somewhere as a hologram sound? The answer is in Steve Limberg.

Limberg, an accounting professor at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, was one of the first instructors to experience Recourse, a three-dimensional video system developed by Austin-based start-up Contextual Content Group for distance education.

Limberg says the experience of teaching through the hologram has been excellent. “I felt like I was in a classroom with the students. Our visual and auditory interaction was as if we were really face to face. I could see the participants fully and clearly, which allowed me to interpret the class dynamics during the discussions and pretend I was there.”

Contextual Content Group founder Jim Spencer states that one of the main goals in creating Recourse was to keep professors and students safe during the pandemic. At the same time, he added that they want to offer an innovative way to increase teacher-student interaction.

Spencer explained that there is no difficulty in entering the platform in the program introduction, and the narrator can enter the studio and connect to the system with a laptop or iPad and start teaching students in the form of a hologram in an online class that looks real.

In the studio where the narrator is, there is a director who ensures that things go smoothly, and the teacher can teach in a wide area of ​​​​12 meters. “This allowed me to move back and forth to a student contributing to the discussion, or back and forth while lecturing,” Limberg says. “Students had the opportunity to come to the front of the class, just as if I was there. In addition, when there was a private matter, students were able to There was also a mechanism that allowed them to consult me ​​privately.”

Always interested in exploring new teaching methods, Limberg says his interest in working with Recourse has been fueled by the need for innovation and social distancing during the pandemic.

Wearing his mask and keeping his distance, the director takes care of all operational details, including sound, sound effects, backgrounds, group discussion rooms, projection of PowerPoint presentations and other visuals onto two large monitors in the classroom. This support allowed Limberg to focus solely on teaching.

Feedback from Limberg's students, who seem to have already embraced the technology, has also been positive.

Spencer states that this system allows professors to stay with their students and at the same time protect them from disease. What about after the pandemic? Spencer claims that this system has great benefits outside of the time of the pandemic. As an example, he said, "You can provide the opportunity to spread the university's sphere of influence to a wider geography."

We will see together whether this interesting and exciting technology will be used more widely in the future.