A Novel Platform for Integrating 360° Videos Within a Virtual Study Abroad Experience

The rising popularity of high-immersion media has found its way to educational use cases, but such media have not yet been extensively evaluated in their ability to provide fully featured study abroad experiences. As recent events have catapulted virtual study abroad programs to the forefront, and as universities seek to build attractive and effective programs, the necessity of systems that provide immersion and student engagement has become apparent. Using the new concept of Dual-Frame System Design, this paper seeks to find if design thinking methodologies can meet these needs while maintaining system reliability, flexibility, and ease of use. Using off-the-shelf components, including a 360° video camera, smartphones, and personal computers, a system was created and tested through a mixed-methods approach based on a user study of 25 US college students. The results of this research may be useful in the creation of high-immersion virtual study abroad experiences, as well as advancing the interdisciplinary frameworks necessary to make these systems broadly available.


Background
Providing students with opportunities to study abroad has been shown to engender many positive effects, from skill development in a foreign language to intercultural competence. However, the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing travel restrictions have caused many universities across the globe to shutter their physical study abroad programs. Universities in Asia are no exception, forced to stop accepting students from other countries while having their own students unable to study at foreign institutions. In the case of Japan, the focus of this research project, there is a restriction on student visa applicants as of April 2021 (MOFA, 2021), effectively preventing new international students from entering the country.
For universities seeking to increase international interest and foster global ties, as well as for students outside of Japan hoping to experience the country, this is unfortunate news. In response, universities have begun offering virtual study abroad opportunities as an alternative, and there seems to be some demand for them. In a survey of prospective and current international students from around the world, while the majority prefer on-campus study to virtual study abroad, about a quarter of students (22.5%) are very or extremely interested in studying online (Pang 2020). While this is a small proportion, it is still significant. This interest has been met with opportunities by universities and specialist providers. For example, Middle Tennessee State University has partnered with Kansai Gaidai University to provide virtual international courses at Kansai Gaidai (MTSU, 2021). Another example is CET Japan, which partners with universities like Washington State University to provide a virtual intensive language and culture course (WSU, 2021). Finally, the Associated Kyoto Program, partnered with Doshisha University, has published 2-dimensional videos of life in Kyoto at their "Virtual Study Abroad" page (Associated Kyoto Program, 2021). Still, while virtual study abroad opportunities centered on Japan are available, very few provide access to highly immersive content, such as 360° videos and virtual reality (VR) videos, and immersion can be an essential component of studying abroad. In addition, there are two boxes, in red and green, dubbed the "Base Frame" and "Immersion Frame." A method proposed by this research to address complications with 360° video, allowing for the use of classroom management and content creation with a lower barrier to teacher entry, has been dubbed Dual-Frame System Design. Using structure and function mapping in the system design process, two separate frames provide two separate feature sets. The first frame, in red, is called the "Base Frame." The contents are editable by instructors with a modicum of computer skill, and support of the underlying technologies has and should continue to remain relatively stable. Based on legacy platforms and text-based editing, it is designed with user-friendliness in mind and does not require specialized programming or 360° video / VR content creation skills. Example platforms include Google Classroom and WordPress, though Google Classroom is used in this case. The second frame uses new media technologies and is called the "Immersion Frame". The contents are not easily editable, and the platforms and technologies are relatively unstable, with services changing or disappearing, and many software and hardware updates may be necessary for continued operation. However, this frame provides the high-immersion content useful for study abroad experiences While the immersion frame concept uses 360° video in this project, it has been designed to be "swappable." For example, the 360° video immersion frame could be replaced by a VR180 livestreaming video immersion frame.
Separating the two frames allows for two preeminent qualities. The first is that the teacher-produced content of the base frame, as well as the platforms that the teacher is familiar with, can remain unchanged even as media platforms are switched on the immersion frame. For example, in 2019, YouTube prevented livestreaming of VR content from portable sources for streamers with fewer than 1,000 subscribers. Rather than having to start from scratch on a new platform, a Dual Frame system would allow the contents of the immersion frame to be switched to a different platform, in one case Facebook Livestreaming, without disrupting the existing workflow, class contents, and other data on the base frame used by the instructor.

Creating and Using the Virtual Study Abroad Module
The creation of this module followed the theme of "A Changing Tokyo," conceived as an activity within a greater virtual study abroad program. The content for the base frame was made using Google Classroom, and relevant facts and figures were used to create short explanations for each of the locations visited. The contents for the immersion frame were recorded on a Vuze XR camera, with six locations in total, as shown in Table 1 below.

Ikebukuro -Ikebukuro Chinatown
The growth of foreign communities.

Ikebukuro -Ikebukuro West Gate Park
Changing depictions of Tokyo youth culture.

Shinjuku -Shinjuku Station Keio Line
The expansion of Japan's railways.
Shinjuku -Suica Penguin Park Transport pivot to sustainability and eco-friendliness.

Shinjuku -West Exit Area
Creating and expanding an urban core.
Each video was a 30-to 45-second clip taken at a standstill with the camera above the head of the person recording. There was no voiceover or external audio such as music added, the purpose being to create a high-immersion "mini-experience" of being in that location.

Research Questions and Methods
This study aims to ask two main questions. The first explores if it is possible to create a reliable high-immersion learning system using 360° video within a full distance learning context. This includes the efficacy of QR-code based transitions between a smartphone and personal computer. Second is evaluating student interest in using high-immersion media such as 360° videos for a virtual study abroad program, including how the students rate immersiveness, and if such experiences impact their interest in the country under consideration.
To answer these questions, a user study was conducted with 25 university students from the United States. Each student, required to have a personal computer and a phone with QR-code-reading capability, conducted the activity within a one-hour maximum time limit. The time to complete the activity was logged, as well as the amount of time (average view duration and average percentage) each video was viewed. Finally, the proper use of QR code scanning software was confirmed using YouTube Analytics.
After testing the system, each student completed an eleven-question survey with mainly Likert scale responses.
Finally, three open-response questions were given to the students, and their responses were coded to find themes through content analysis (Stemler 2019), with the questions asking for positive experiences, negative experiences, and areas for improvement. The questions can be found in Table 2. The change in student attitudes before and after the experience was tested using a Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Student smartphone OS types were also checked.
Participants were selected on the Amazon "Mechanical Turk" platform, which allows for vetting possible respondents by a number of filters. Two filters were used: "18-25 Years of Age" and "US High School Graduate." Participants were also asked to fall under two additional requirements: 1) to have a personal computer as well as a smartphone with the YouTube app installed and the ability to read QR codes, and 2) be a current student at an institute of higher education in the US. The participants were briefed on the purpose of the study, and each participant received a $10 payment through the Mechanical Turk payment system. Given that the average time for activity completion was slightly over 31 minutes, with the single highest being 55 minutes, this meets many concerns on wage-related ethics of crowdsourced research (Fort, Adda, and Cohen 2011; Williamson 2016).

Results
The US market shares of mobile operating systems, which stood at 59% for iOS and 40% for Android, were not reflected by the participants' smartphones. To begin, 58% of the smartphones in the study used were Android, and 42% were iOS. As only modern iOS phones all come with a built-in QR code reader in the camera app, and only some Android models do, an extra step of installing a QR code reading app was required for some Android participants. This was corroborated in the open-ended questions section, which will be discussed later.
Out of the 11 questions on the survey, ten were Likert scale questions following  Before this activity, how interested were you in visiting Japan?

Q11
After this activity, how interested are you in visiting Japan?
As seen in Figure 3 below, there were positive responses on the system's ease of use, found in Question 1 and Question 2, as 87.5% of respondents felt the system was very easy or somewhat easy to use. 91.7% of the respondents felt the QR code scanning was very easy or somewhat easy to use. Dislikes about the experience mainly had to do with the video, particularly video quality and length.
Respondent comments included "The videos were too short. I think 5 minutes or more would be more interesting," "I would have liked better video quality," and "The resolution of the videos." For improving the experience, in the "Add Content" theme, respondents wished to have more videos, freedom to move, and informative narration. This overlapped with the "Dislikes" question.

One respondent explained:
Expanding upon my previous answer, for me it would be an improvement, if instead of the text there would be someone with an engaging voice explaining its content, after which we are left with the sounds of the city for a while before the video ends. Also, it would be nice if there were pop-out bubbles in specific places of interest during the video to add information in an engaging way.

Another explained:
If there were more scenarios, it would be more interesting, I think. I want to freely explore Tokyo.
The above responses were edited only for spelling and grammar. Out of the 25 respondents, the submission of one was removed due to missing answers on the survey and no having no input on the three open questions.
Finally, when using YouTube analytics, it was shown that the video counts were higher than the number of participants, and that the videos were being accessed by QR code scanning apps through their traffic source (for example, com.teaapps.barcodescanner, com.xaomi.scanner, and tw.mobileapp.qrcode.banner). For each video, the average view duration was within 10% of the video length, implying a high retention rate when viewing the content.

Conclusion
To begin with responding to the first research question, it is clearly possible to create a reliable high-immersion learning system using 360° videos and QR-code transitions, even within an entirely-distance-learning paradigm. As explained in the "Results" section, transition times between the personal computer and smartphone were very low, and there were no major issues with question submission or viewing the videos. This may partially be attributed to the detailed instructions, including photographs of the process, that were provided to each student at the start of the experience. YouTube Analytics confirmed that the QR code scanners were being properly used, and this was corroborated by the open-ended questions, Question 2, Question 4, and Question 5.
To answer the second question, evaluating student interest, the effect on interest in studying abroad in Japan was found to be statistically significant at p < .05. In addition, the majority of students found the activity immersive and interesting and would recommend it to others, as shown through the responses of Questions 6 through 11. These results can be useful for the development of future high-immersion systems in a distance learning context, including the use of Dual-Frame System Design. Finally, given the media swappability of Dual-Frame design, a separate project could replace the 360°content with VR180 content, allowing for a comparison lacking in current research.

Areas for Improvement
This research project was restricted to examining only a portion of a fully distance-learning virtual study abroad experience. It did not test integration with existing learning management systems or its usefulness as a module in relation to a larger course. In addition, learning outcomes were not measured, as this was meant to be a small "experience snapshot." Integrating pre-and post-testing, as well as student evaluations on completing assignments, would have also been more useful. However, these omissions may pave the way for future research.

Future Research
This project is only the first step to using system design methodology for creating large-scale learning experience in distance learning environments. This version has helped create the conception of Dual-Frame System Design while engaging in a process of iterative change through "design thinking", as shown in Figure 4 below.