It seems like an April Fool’s joke: Holograms are coming for your classrooms. For us, though, it’s starting to look like reality. In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis and during the global push toward online learning, we’ve scaled up our virtual reality activities and now are looking for the next step. We’ve already started experimenting with mixed reality.

Mixed reality is when real and virtual worlds collide, producing a new environment in which physical and digital objects coexist. Holograms, one form of mixed reality, could potentially revolutionize adult learning as we know it.

You can enhance your learning and collaboration activities through projections, either of yourself or your learning content. For example, you could participate in a meeting using a 3D projection of your body. Alternatively, you could deliver a presentation using 3D learning content, especially ones that are complex or otherwise too difficult to present in real life.

Staff and participants will experiment with this new technology in the ITCILO’s Learning Innovation Lab, scheduled to open in 2022. Get a preview during this year's Innovation Day, 5 October 2021.

The ITCILO is currently experimenting with Microsoft Hololens. The device, originally tested by the team in a VR lab in Bologna in 2019, uses sensors, optics, and holographic processing to create a mixed reality learning experience.

The result? Virtual elements that blend with the real world, or even simulate a fully immersive virtual world.

Throughout the past pandemic-addled year, we’ve come up with new solutions and accelerated innovation.