By Ahmad Zureiki, Director of Collaboration Business, Cisco Middle East and Africa
Holography has continued to develop at pace, and now boasts an existence far beyond the pages of science fiction. Holograms are projected light and electromagnetic energy that create the illusion of solid objects. While initially created to improve the resolving power of the electron microscope, today, holograms are becoming a reality for experiential learning.
In the promise of offering new ways to approach learning challenges, the use of innovative technologies like holograms have a great impact on the digital learning space:
For decades, the UAE has adopted several hands-on learning programmes. A study conducted in a UAE school that executed the programme saw 83 percent of children claim that education is crucial for success compared to only 33 percent in the previous year. What’s more, learners are more inclined to reflect on newfound knowledge gained from experiential learning, which results in even more learning and growth.
Holographic technology has gained popularity in other industries because it offers an exceptional representation of the three-dimensional world around us. And interest has grown in combining holographic technology across various industries. In the UAE, holographs are being used for surgical planning of complex procedures, replicating 3D images of patient’s organs, and more.
By experiential learning and holographic technology as practical approaches to education, we can transform the upskilling of today’s workforce into a collaborative, reflective, and engaging experiential learning experience.
Holograms can simulate face-to-face interactions, removing geographical barriers so learners can share their diverse cultures through live projections and 3D presentations. Such an interactive environment, even from around the world, can improve collaboration, build community, and instill a sense of belonging as a class, all of which are critical for a memorable and effective learning experience.
Using holograms to create an experiential learning experience can also meet the social justice and equity needs of learners from marginalized and underrepresented communities. Learners can practice their skills through these immersive experiences, building their career and economic opportunities and confidence in accomplishing career-related skills.
Cisco Webex Holograms are the industry’s only meeting solution that uses augmented reality (AR) and immersive 3D holograms to bring collaboration and hybrid work together. They offer real-time, photorealistic, holographic interaction that surpasses video conferencing to give users a truly immersive experience. With Webex Hologram’s holographic capabilities, participants can interact with hands-on collaboration, such as design or training with a physical object. That kind of interaction was previously only possible with in-person meetings. And those interactions are not the only ways holograms can improve learning.
Holograms allow learners to learn about complex topics and perform hands-on lab experiments in a collaborative environment. For example, they can walk through large-scale network security readiness and training exercises via holograms, where they can visually interact with the 3D system in real-time as cyberattacks are launched, diagnosed, and countered to keep network services operating.
Similarly, using holograms to understand network architectures can enable learners to visualize and interact with their designs in 3D. In addition, it can help them identify design flaws to discover better solutions in real-time.
While institutions need time to adopt holography on a widely accessible scale, educators are already working on offering experiences that can mimic in-person classes and hands-on lab interactions. It is only a matter of time before the Middle East’s schools and universities incorporate the technology into their teaching.
