The 2022 iTNews Benchmark Awards has named Victoria University’s new augmented reality [AR] of its Footscray Park campus as a finalist for the Best Education Project category.
The Victoria University team created the VU Explore feature with Metaverse ready elements not seen before in other online tours.
The new experience involved campus visitors using their phone to create an immersive virtual environment full of AR holograms of indigenous plants while learning about key campus facilities and services, their locations and Victoria University courses.
Victoria University Hive Lab product manager Kati Elizabeth said the AR capability has offered campus visitors with a unique mixed-reality experience.
“Users who collect all the native plant holograms during campus events can receive a free native seedling provided by the Iramoo Grassland Centre and Nursery located at VU’s St Albans Campus,” she said.
“The virtual world of the app leads to a rewarding experience in real life.”
In conjunction with the Moondani Balluk Indigenous Unit and the Iramoo Grassland Centre and Nursery, the Hive Lab team transformed native flora from the Maribyrnong area into the collectible holograms.
The VU Explore application also allowed users to discover and scan decals to unlock a variety of native plants, such as Bidgee Widgee, Gold Dus Wattle and Minnie Daisy.
Ms Elizabeth said VU’s Hive Lab collaborated with the information technology services, future students and connected learning teams to deliver the project.
“It was a very rewarding experience for our team to collaborate with the VU Future Students team and ITS on this new AR tour feature tour where the Indigenous natural history of the campus location is acknowledged within the virtual space and then brought to life in people’s hands,” she said.
VU Hive Lab digital designer Khuyen Phung and resident indigenous digital artist Elijah Mcdonald designed the local flora holograms.
Winners of the 2022 iTnews Awards will be announced in early June.
