Fresno State has launched a pilot of the new virtual environment, "Hubs at Fresno State," a Mixed Reality (XR) platform, to introduce first-time students to the Fresno State campus and offer all students the opportunity to meet and collaborate with classmates in a highly creative environment as an enhanced digital experience in addition to Zoom. While this first project is aimed specifically at College of Science and Math students, our teams wanted to showcase the technology available to everyone right here on campus.

While planning for a virtual Fall 2020 semester the Director of the College of Science and Mathematics’ Advising and Resources Center, Dr. Jaime Arvizu, was searching for a solution to engage incoming freshmen through both social and collaborative learning experiences in the absence of in-person gatherings. Reaching out to Technology Services brought Arvizu to the Digital Transformation/Innovation (DX) team headed by Max Tsai. During preliminary planning, there were many different avenues explored and considered, but after significant deliberation and while keeping equity and accessibility at the forefront, Hubs at Fresno State is where the project landed.

Both teams sought to create a virtual environment for the purpose of socially integrating students to the University and the college by providing a collaboration space, a gathering space for activities outside of the classroom, and a place for new students to become familiar with the campus in the absence of being able to physically visit. With the tireless efforts of the Digital Transformation interns over the summer, there is now a mixed reality space that will accomplish all three.

After the first introduction to the new mixed reality space the initial reaction from students has been positive:

"I enjoyed seeing other students and professors virtually. It was a unique experience."

"Talking to people in the rooms. Having people talk in the background like there were actually people around was pretty cool."

"It was a cool new feature that can really help with studying."

The mixed reality environment provides an opportunity for students to form groups on their own in the same space and our hope is that they will be able to work on school projects that relate to topics that are being taught in their courses.

"We had students interactively engaging with each other through CSM’s HUB mixed-reality space, and it really did a good job giving everyone a sense of being in the Science 1 building," said Beth Weinman, associate professor, Earth and Environmental Science. "The look of the lobby, being there with 40 students, and being shown around by the ARC Vistas and DX Innovation Interns was really effective in instilling one of the first collective sense of campus and college belonging."

Immersive and augmented technology has been a continuous effort of Technology Services to provide an enhanced digital experience for student engagement. COVID-19 made the urgency to deploy new innovative digital solutions necessary in order to support student success.

“When CSM reached out to me, it was the ideal situation to deploy our Digital Transformation and Innovation team of interns. Luckily they already had a similar project started so they were able to quickly build something for an immediate pilot. New ways of using virtual technology might be the key to virtual collaboration as part of the new normal due to COVID-19. We plan to continue partnering with other campus areas to scale out this BOLD technology initiative.“ said Deputy CIO Robert Guinn.

For more information, contact Max Tsai at 559.278.4180, janq@csufresno.edu, or visit dx.fresnostate.edu.