Photosphere Tour Guide

Abstract

This document serves as a comprehensive guide for creating and implementing Virtual Reality (VR) into education at the post-secondary level, as well as recommendations for integrating course learning objectives in Virtual Tours. Virtual Tours are assemblies of 360° photospheres and/or panoramas that transition the viewer through a series of 360° environments, which can be static or active (depending on the hardware and software used to capture the environments and construct the Tours). Virtual Tours are an appealing medium for educators to explore due to their inherently immersive and engaging nature as well as their inexpensive entry point to create. They also offer many customisation options to accommodate a wide variety of students, instructors and intended learning outcomes. This document describes the process of creating Virtual Tours using the now discontinued free Google Tour Creator (creation) and Google Poly (viewing) websites as well as the Google Expeditions mobile app. While no longer supported by Google’s software, this document offers valuable insight into the design of Virtual Tours that are pedagogically effective for student learning and the next generation of Google Tours (i.e. Google Expedition Pro). This document elaborates on the purpose of specific design choices that can be made in a Virtual Tour creation platform that help support student learning.