Demonstration of Immersive Technologies for Geospatial Learning

Abstract. Immersive technologies are becoming a powerful tool for educators across multiple disciplines including geospatial science. They offer new ways to engage and educate geospatial students, removing barriers that may exist in traditional teaching methods. Especially because the limitations of 2D screens are often exceeded by the complexity of modern data sets. Examples of challenges that educators often encounter are explaining theoretical concepts in the classroom, providing alternate scenarios, preparing students for physical labs, and limited / restricted access to physical sites. Immersive technologies can be a great resource to support on-site lectures and enhance remote learning, a necessity in today's educational panorama. Immersive technologies typically include virtual, augmented, and mixed reality. Each method offers different pedagogical advantages and poses different challenges. Before any implementation, these advantages and challenges must be examined and understood to maximize the benefit of immersive methods to the students and mitigate potential drawbacks that could hinder learning outcomes. This paper provides a review of the different immersive methods, presenting examples of their application in geospatial education with lessons learned and recommendations for future work. The case examples include a variety of different instruments and tasks such as the simulation of GNSS, differential leveling, total station operations, and airborne LiDAR data collection.