The University of Rennes, a French public and experimental academic institution with 35,000 students, 35 research centers, and 9 campuses, took the next step and contacted WorkAdventure to develop and implement a digital campus.
Within this virtual world, students and professors can find a replica of the original campus (but online) where they can spontaneously interact with each other, take and give classes, host academic events, and more.
In need of a digital campus
The University of Rennes required a virtual world platform for different specific reasons:
- To emulate and replicate their real-life campuses and classrooms.
- To host online and interactive open house events.
- To give lectures and assignments through gamified learning processes.
And that’s why they decided to call WorkAdventure, a European solution among the virtual world platforms.
Ditching Gather for WorkAdventure
The University of Rennes started this virtual endeavor with Gather, an American virtual headquarters platform. Nevertheless, the institution was subsequently highly motivated to switch to a different solution due to dissatisfaction with its product policy. In this scenario, the University of Rennes chose WorkAdventure over Gather for various important reasons:
- The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) policy of WorkAdventure.
- WorkAdventure’s efficient features and tools for learning, assessment, and teaching.
- The fact that WorkAdventure is a French and local solution.
“Gather didn’t respect at all the GDPR policy we were demanding for our academic project. Thus, we were motivated to seek an equivalent solution, but one that was 100% French. Furthermore, I strongly believe that WorkAdventure has surpassed Gather thanks to its numerous efficient features, like the AI-powered bots”
Dolly Ramella, project manager and educational engineer.
Hosting open house events on a digital campus
Open House events are well-known around the world for their effectiveness in showing soon-to-graduate high school students everything about a university, its campus, and the study programs.
While facing this thrilling challenge, the University of Rennes noticed a problematic situation, which is unfortunately implied in open house events: students who live far away from their preferred academic institutions might not be able to attend these gatherings.
In this context, they decided to embrace an online solution capable of breaking the geographical barriers and impediments while keeping the spontaneity and interactivity of every physical event:
“Our goal is to introduce soon-to-graduate high school students who are far away from big universities into our activities and study programs. We encourage them to apply and integrate our academic institution”
Dolly Ramella, project manager, and educational engineer.
On the other hand, it has been stated that hosting open house events in a virtual world is not just a means to discover the institution’s offer without geographical barriers, but also a very useful tool to get to know the university’s campus and appearance.
Regarding this need, the University of Rennes decided to design, with WorkAdventure’s team, a map with a faithful representation of the actual physical campus and classrooms. Thanks to this emulation of the real-life buildings, students were able to get a first impression of the appearance of the campuses before attending their first in-person classes.
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New ways of learning and teaching
Teaching and learning are essential subjects within universities and educational institutions. These topics find themselves in a continuous evolution thanks to the development of new technologies.
For this instance, the University of Rennes decided to embrace the mutations involved in teaching and learning by installing WorkAdventure’s virtual world platform, with which they created and customized their campuses and classrooms. Within the walls of these digital buildings, changes regarding teaching and learning were implemented:
- Online gamified learning activities.
- New dynamics between students and professors.
- AI-powered assignments with bots.
Gamified learning on a digital campus
The University of Rennes not only wanted a virtual campus that replicates the real-life buildings and classrooms, but this institution also required a digital tool that enables new methods of online learning and teaching.
For that matter, they decided to embrace the possibility of gamified learning offered by WorkAdventure’s software piece.
“With gamified learning, students feel more motivated because they’re immersed in the task they’re performing. This changes the attractiveness of the assignments because they’re inside the game, and that facilitates the performance of the activities”
Dolly Ramella, project manager and educational engineer.
Although it is possible to implement gamified learning in physical and face-to-face educational institutions, the time required to design said teaching activity is significantly shortened by WorkAdventure’s interface because adapting and refurbishing a virtual environment is much easier than adapting physical spaces.
Thanks to this advantage, the University of Rennes was able to arrange Escape Game events for its students in different subjects.
Revolutionizing the dynamics between students and professors.
Another interesting aspect of the implementation of digital campuses and classrooms is the new dynamics between students and professors. As a matter of fact, in WorkAdventure’s virtual classrooms, every person (no matter their role or position) is represented by an avatar.
The avatars can approach each other, triggering video discussions, and they can go to virtual conference rooms in the map to attend lectures and seminars. Since everybody has an avatar, the distinction between students and professors gets blurred.
“These boundaries get blurred because we’re all the same; we’re all avatars. We can’t see during a class that the professor is watching us; we only notice their avatar right next to ours. Erasing this distance between students and teachers was our main goal—creating a classroom where we learn differently and focusing on the gaming aspect”
Dolly Ramella, project manager and educational engineer.
Utilizing AI in universities to improve learning
In different events, the University of Rennes benefited from the AI-powered bots of WorkAdventure, especially during certain occasions like:
- Open house events.
- Students’ assignments and tasks.
In the first case, the bots managed to become very helpful by answering questions from all the attendees who approached them. Consequently, the bots were able to respond and guide the soon-to-graduate students within the virtual campus throughout the open house day.
In the second case, the bots were displayed around the classrooms to correct the students’ assignments and activities, providing valuable feedback when needed and clarifying the incorrect answers.
