The fourth Charming ETN Network-Wide Event was supposed to take place in Utrecht, the Netherlands with a lot of bikes, beautiful grachten, and Bitterballen. Due to the travel advisories in this uncommon year, things had to be switched to plan B: moving the event online. But for Charming things are always immersive and therefore the whole event was hosted in VirBELA, different to the typical Zoom, Teams, and Skype calls. To still provide a bit of a Dutch flair during this week, it was decided that if our participants can’t go to Utrecht, Utrecht will visit them and a Dutch care package was sent out to everybody.
The Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) each got their own office in VirBELA, where their prerecorded progress presentation was displayed and where viewers could leave their feedback even before the event started.
The event kicked-off with the keynote of Dr. Casper Hulshof about myths in learning and education which was accompanied by insights of Prof. Dr. Johan Jeuring, the department head at the institute of Information and Computing Sciences at Utrecht University.
During the training, the ESRs learned about instructional design, narrative in game-based learning, interest and motivation, assessment of learning experiences, and engaged in a discussion about current trends in VR training. Additionally they learned about VR simulation training used in ACTA and the ESRs were offered individual supervision sessions with the Utrecht University professors to discuss their projects.
For the next event, Charming will be going to Copenhagen and at that time hopefully in person again…
