Virtual Vienna: A Practical Guide from Concept to Classroom
By Trevor B. Teafatiller, Bastian De Monte, and Dr. Budimka Uskokovic, The Ohio State University
DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.69732/PMXT9827
Introduction
Virtual reality (VR) is a very promising tool that facilitates not only students’ linguistic proficiency but also helps students immerse in an authentic cultural context, develop their embodied cognition, increase their kinesthetic engagement, and get them involved in languaculture learning while exploring linguistic landscapes (Chun et al., 2022). At The Ohio State University, VR has been utilized in various courses, such as history and geography, thanks to the newly opened Emerging Technology Studio (ETS). The ETS is a center where instructors and students can access emerging technologies for a wide range of academic purposes, including research and teaching, with staff available to assist users in operating equipment like VR headsets and interfaces, as well as to perform the necessary integration of external content into the VR system. For cultural immersion and exploration in basic language courses, we have been successfully using 360° videos and Meta Quest 3 headsets to help students enhance intercultural competence and reduce culture shock (Levak & Son, 2017). However, we have noticed, similarly to Parmaxi (2020), that many world language educators—not only in our institution but also countrywide—hesitate to incorporate VR in their teaching practice due to a lack of advanced technology skills, monetary funds for the development of meaningful as well as engaging activities, and time (aligned with the research findings described in Kaplan-Rakowski et al. (2023)). Thus, by providing a lesson plan supporting the textbook Impuls Deutsch and a guided critical reflection written by two different instructors of German, we argue in this paper that novice teachers do not need to reinvent the wheel if they decide to use 360° videos in their teaching and that they can create / integrate activities with manageable effort and without significant expense. In doing so, we hope to help novice teachers of German and teachers who have not used VR previously anticipate what might go wrong, solve issues if they arise, and adjust their lesson plan on the go. In what follows, we first provide details about the lesson plan the instructors followed and then the technology they used. Subsequently, we provide two different reports, which we then discuss.
Lesson Plan
This lesson plan is designed for use in a second-semester college-level German course (GERMAN 1102), utilizing the second edition of the textbook Impuls Deutsch 1, but could be adapted to fit other textbooks or contexts. Chapter 7 of this textbook focuses on Austria, exploring its rich culture, including food, music, cultural sites, Jewish history in Vienna, and the artist Gustav Klimt. The lesson plan is derived from unit 83: In der Stadt unterwegs in Machen (In-Class Book), with the primary objective of helping students navigate Vienna, give directions, and express which sites they would like to visit.
Since many of our students have not visited Vienna or Austria before, we aim to bring the city to them by creating this lesson plan and worksheet for the 80-minute class based on the textbook and incorporating 360° videos sourced from YouTube.
The core of the lesson plan is the 360° experience, where students immerse themselves in six videos, each limited to 2-3 minutes viewing time. The sites were chosen by the Director of German Language Instruction and the instructors, with the videos deployed and tested by the Manager of Emerging Technology Studio. Our goal was for students to experience Vienna’s cultural heritage before learning more about Austria and its capital in the classroom. The following 360° YouTube videos were selected:
- Belvedere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azExG86GbgY
- Rathaus/Burgtheater: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVsvORTTD5s
- Schönbrunn: https://youtu.be/4ZK2AfTqeRc?si=agfLqRgiToNWi5CQ
- Hofburg: https://youtu.be/IIT8vYwGjAg?si=_nZgSusfJZRsKvui
- Altstadt: https://youtu.be/SGvVclWFoVY?si=qgvQ6-SgbIjoqQzK
- Prater: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Sxe1XiqSv4
The activities surrounding the 360° experience and presented in the worksheet include exercises both before and after the immersive element. To prepare for this and the communicative goal of giving directions in Vienna, students identify a variety of transportation modes and practice pronouncing them in German (see Picture 1).
Subsequently, they discuss the frequency of different modes of transportation in the context of Vienna and their hometown or country (see Picture 2).
Prior to entering the VR space, students are asked to make predictions regarding the content they expect to observe and how they might perceive the VR experience (see Picture 3).
Afterward, they discuss their experiences, describe various landmarks that they saw in the videos using adjectives (see Picture 4), and engage in giving directions while employing imperative verb forms (see worksheet). This teaches students the skills necessary to navigate a European city like Vienna with the end goal being that the students walk away with an understanding of the city’s pace, atmosphere, sounds, and everyday interactions, creating an authentic and intuitive connection as close to real life as possible.
Given the central role of the 360° experiences, we provide additional activities to prepare students for the final task of selecting sites and providing directions, which involves using navigation software to create a metro route applicable to real-world scenarios. We felt that the original activity in Machen (259, p. 251) (see Picture 5) needed more scaffolding, so we created supplementary activities to enhance students’ familiarity with some of Vienna’s key locations (e.g., Schloss Schönbrunn, Rathaus, Hofburg, Belvedere) and their first engagement with cultural facets of Vienna.
In the following sections, we will illustrate some details about the utilized technology and then review what was effective and provide recommendations for other instructors planning similar lessons that integrate VR with textbook-based instruction.
Methodology and Technology
The hardware used by both instructors was the Meta Quest 3 standalone VR headset with Touch Plus Controllers. The number of headset units for Session 1 and 2 were 10 and 13, respectively. Logistically, a small class size is preferred. Class management during a VR lesson benefits from the support of at least one knowledgeable technology staff in addition to the instructor; however, limiting participant numbers to smaller groups (perhaps 4-6 students in rotations) may be a more effective strategy when only one instructor is present. Due to space limitations and connectivity constraints, it is recommended to limit the number of VR headsets used simultaneously depending on the facility’s capacity and the experience type, to ensure a secure environment and stable performance. Content management and delivery was made possible with ManageXR. ManageXR is a mobile device management (MDM) platform used to manage multiple extended reality (XR) devices and experiences. It allows VR applications and WebXR links to be deployed to multiple headsets in one platform, and it allows for customization of the in-headset user experience, which can make content easier to access for first-time users. The 360° videos used in the VR experience were sourced from publicly available content on YouTube and were deployed to the headsets as WebXR links.
Learners interacted with the content by using the handheld controllers to select the ‘YouTube’ category on the top bar to find videos labeled after the different Vienna landmarks from the main menu (see Picture 6).
After the selection interface, the YouTube videos would appear in the virtual environment and the learners could then select playback settings (i.e., adjust video resolution if needed) before activating the play button and being immersed in the 360° video (see Picture 7).
Learners would then alternate between the main menu and the videos, continuing this process until all the videos had been viewed. VR instruction and support, as well as provision of facility space and equipment, were provided by The Ohio State University’s ETS. We gratefully acknowledge the expertise and advice of Mila Gajić (VR Lab Manager and Developer), who also helped to revise and validate the manuscript’s technology-focused content, in addition to technical staff who assisted in implementing the VR experience.
It is important to note for future instructors that the 360° YouTube videos selected for this VR lesson are also viewable on a computer desktop or mobile device, such as a phone or tablet, with minimal distortion when watched in 2-dimensional (2-D) format. This means that students who are not able to complete the VR experience can still participate in the activities from the VR lesson worksheet by watching the videos outside of VR on a computer or mobile device screen instead of using the VR headset. The ETS did have computer monitors available for use, but ultimately they were not needed. Again, it is worth emphasizing the fact that the speed at which the user’s perceptual field within the VR environment turns as users manipulate the VR headset and controllers in addition to how quickly the video rotates during video playback itself can significantly affect comfort and immersion. During consultation when selecting the 360° YouTube videos, the VR Lab Manager and Developer at ETS who assisted with the implementation of the VR experience urged that certain videos that were suggested be left out because of their potential to induce motion sickness and dizziness due to the turning speed. Even with this precaution, a couple students across the two pilot sessions conducted in this article still reported brief symptoms of dizziness.
The VR lesson worksheet was created using Adobe Illustrator, and all images used were found publicly available on the internet. A large portion of the textual content and organization was sourced from and modeled after unit 83: In der Stadt unterwegs from the Impuls Deutsch Machen book. The color scheme appears on the downloadable file, but it is noteworthy to mention that the viewing quality is not diminished when printed in black and white (see Picture 8).
Students were given a printed version of the worksheet during the VR lesson as well as access to the digital file uploaded to the learning management system for the course afterwards.
VR Experience Reports
This section presents two first-person accounts from instructors who implemented the VR lesson in their classrooms. The reports outline each instructor’s background, preparatory steps taken prior to the VR session, detailed observations during lesson delivery, and reflection on post-lesson activities. Together, they offer complementary perspectives on the lesson’s development, execution, and pedagogical impact.
First Perspective
Instructor Profile
Trevor Teafatiller is currently a third-year graduate student at The Ohio State University, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. He started learning German his first year in college at California State University, Long Beach back in 2013, and began teaching German at the same institution starting in 2021. He has taught first- and second-semester German at the university level since, both online and in-person. However, he had previously only experienced minimal exposure to VR, which was limited to recreational use during a single session one year prior to this write-up. This was his first experience teaching with and creating instruction materials for a VR lesson. He has never traveled to Vienna before in his life, having only ever reached as far east as Salzburg, Austria during his 2017-2018 exchange year as a scientist and undergraduate in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Trevor drafted the initial outline of the VR lesson worksheet in consultation with Dr. Budimka Uskokovic and worked alongside Bastian De Monte to further revise and add valuable elements vital to cultural understanding and practical know-how to be able to navigate Vienna itself for integration into subsequent versions of the VR lesson worksheet leading up to the final edit used for the lesson.
Preparing for Immersion
The introduction to Austria- and Vienna-related content began two class sessions prior to the VR lesson itself, for a total timespan of one week. Following the department’s curriculum, during this time, the students were exposed to Lernen, Machen, and Zeigen content from the Impuls Deutsch 1 series for Kapitel 7 units 80: Österreich and E82: Wien – Die Hauptstadt von Österreich. To boost student interest more, 30 minutes of the class session directly prior to the VR lesson was dedicated to Austrian and Viennese cultural and linguistic diversity and history, informed by the personal lived experience of co-author Bastian De Monte, a native Viennese. In addition, this instructor had the students participate in a pictionary-inspired cool-down activity with transportation nouns and verbs that are featured in the VR lesson in Activities 1a (see Picture 1) and 5 (see Picture 8) from the worksheet.
Immersive Lesson Delivery
As each student entered the ETS lab, they were handed the VR lesson worksheet as a black-and-white printout and the instructor had time in between to give each student a brief overview of the activity goals verbally in English. Students were given the freedom to form their own groups, and the final formations were two groups of four and one group of two. It is notable that students tended to work in pairs, though several pairs organically merged into groups of four without prompting from the instructor. This spontaneous regrouping appeared to be driven by students’ interest in expanding the conversation during activities with discussion components and engaging with a broader range of peers. When all the students had settled in, the language switched to German and students were invited by the instructor to recall and share anything they already knew about Vienna (2 minutes) before Activity 1a (4.5 minutes) instructions were read aloud by one student. In groups, the students used the target language to read the vocabulary items and make their selections for the matching exercise. The instructor visited each group and checked their answers with verbal confirmation.
Directions for Activity 1b (6 minutes) and example dialogues were read by the instructor. This was followed by individual writing time and a subsequent period for students to share their opinions on transportation habits. Again, the instructor checked in on each group’s progress to ensure the vocabulary items for frequency were being used by each student. For Activity 2 (3 minutes), two students performed the example dialogue and the class was then directed to discuss their familiarity with different modes of transportation. The instructor encouraged the use of structures modeled in the supporting text boxes around the dialogue.
Once the pre-activities were completed, the VR controls and safety presentation (5.5 minutes) was given by an ETS staff member in English. In it, the students were briefed on the main menu interface in addition to how to troubleshoot the YouTube videos within the VR space. The instructor then guided students through a quick recap (3 minutes) of the main controls and safety features to check their memory. The instructor switched language use back to German as the students entered the VR environment.
The students spent roughly 20 minutes in the VR space, seated in spinning chairs which turned out to facilitate the 360° immersion. The instructor took notice of the time and kept tabs on how many videos were being completed by the students every couple of minutes, and reminded the class to use the worksheet space for Activity 3 for note taking between videos. The instructor noticed one student took off their headset and the student communicated that they felt dizzy after the first video and needed a few minutes to recover before resuming participation. Another student briefly experienced a problem after accidentally exiting the main menu, but it was quickly resolved by ETS staff.
A few students finished viewing the videos a couple of minutes earlier than the majority of the class and were advised to brainstorm adjectives for Activity 4. Once all the students had finished watching the videos, there was a short break (2 minutes) in the lesson where the class took a group photo before returning to the worksheet outside of VR. The lesson proceeded with Activity 4 brainstorming (3 minutes) and group discussion (2 minutes) of adjectives, although more time could have been allotted to the latter to allow time for reflection. Students then reviewed Activity 5 (2 minutes), and the instructor visually confirmed that each group had completed the matching activity.
An example U-Bahn route with a single transfer (3 stops total) as presented in the sample prompt (see Picture 8) was announced by the instructor for Activity 6a, who then visited each group to clarify questions and to see that they had found the correct stops on the subway map (4 minutes), and this helped students understand the concept of Activity 6b (7.5 minutes) and how to use the map on the worksheet; each pair was also handed a larger subway map color printout for visual clarity. It became evident that certain vocabulary related to the location names and street types was unfamiliar to students (e.g., -gasse, -quartier, -platz, etc.); these and similar vocabulary items were revisited in the following class session.
During Activity 7a/b (12 minutes), students used navigation on their personal smartphones to plan their routes in Vienna. While intended to be done in pairs, many students worked individually until prompted to share their route. The task of understanding how to use navigation software for these locations proved difficult for some students–the settings on students’ personal devices were in English and a couple students had difficulty finding the locations in Vienna because many location names were similar or identical to other place names in the world. However, each student managed to create and describe a route consisting of 2-3 locations.
Post-VR Learning Activities
Since the VR lesson covered content from Machen unit 83: In der Stadt unterwegs, the lesson directly after covered unit 84: Sehenswürdigkeiten with added information provided by the instructor about the landmarks the students visited in VR. These locations were used to teach dative prepositional phrases for describing direction (von … zu …), and the students spent additional time with a city map to verbalize routes described in unit 84. The postcard from Activity 8 was assigned as homework and used in-class for a peer-based revision activity, allowing students to reflect on language use and their recent shared experience in virtual Vienna, and the students submitted this revised postcard for formative instructor feedback.
Second Perspective
Instructor Profile
Bastian De Monte is a graduate student at The Ohio State University with a focus on second-language acquisition. As a native of Vienna and German speaker, he brings a multidisciplinary background with degrees in medicine, European Union studies, and cultural studies. Before entering graduate school in the United States, he taught 9th grade through the Teach For Austria program. Drawing on his familiarity with the city and pedagogical experience, he collaborated with Dr. Budimka Uskokovic to help select the 360° videos used in the VR lesson in coordination with ETS.
Immersive Lesson Delivery
The preparation for the immersive session closely mirrored that of Trevor Teafatiller’s class. The session itself began with a warm-up (Activity 1) where students matched various modes of transportation with their German names and discussed how frequently locals and tourists use them. We included Vienna-specific terms like die Bim (tram) and der Fiaker (horse-drawn carriage), the latter of which is actually occasionally used by Viennese people—not just tourists—as students were informed. The activity worked well to ease students into the topic and set a conversational tone for the lesson.
In Activity 2, students worked in pairs to compare transportation habits in their hometowns and a metropolis like New York City. They used comparative structures and prepositions like mit with relatively little prompting, which suggested a decent level of comfort with the grammar, which was also explained in a dedicated box on the first page. This task provided a helpful transition into the Vienna-specific focus that followed.
Before showing the 360° videos, we completed a short prediction activity (Activity 3). Students were asked to consider what one might expect to see in a European city and reflect on any prior knowledge they had about Vienna. They enjoyed the guessing component and engaged with this reflective task in a curious and open manner.
The 360° video experience followed. After brief and easy-to-follow instructions by the ETS Lab Manager, we viewed six short clips, each about one to two minutes long. Students started using the VR headsets, with only one case of nausea. A separate student needed assistance from ETS staff in order to reconfigure their headset’s virtual boundary settings to match the user’s immediate physical space, requiring only a brief intervention. The class was visibly engaged – many leaned in or made quiet utterances of excitement while watching. The design of the second page of the worksheet allowed students to take brief notes individually between videos using the spaces provided and reflect individually before sharing their thoughts with their peers. However, after viewing the videos, they immediately transitioned into a group discussion (Activity 4) about the sites, buildings, and monuments they had seen. While the spontaneous discussion was productive and lively, a short, individual reflection exercise to have them record what they had just observed would have probably been beneficial for the students to help recall and note vocabulary more effectively.
Next came a vocabulary activity (Activity 5), conducted in plenum, where we focused on verbs related to public transportation. Students matched the verb phrases einsteigen, aussteigen, umsteigen, and [Verkehrsmittel] nehmen to images depicting each action. We then moved on to discussing the imperative form, supported by a grammar box. As three of the four verbs are separable, we briefly revisited the concept of verb separability to help students apply the correct word order.
In Activity 6, students practiced giving directions. First, they followed the instructor’s instructions, navigating from one point to another on the subway map. Then, the students practiced giving directions to each other and moving around the Vienna subway map, with starting points and end points of their choosing—ideally using the imperative mode. Their worksheet included a model to support them (on Page 3 of the worksheet). Additionally, I provided each group with an enlarged version of the subway map, printed in color, for them to be better able to distinguish between individual metro lines. Nevertheless, the subway map posed a significant challenge for the students, many of whom had never seen or used one before. Students struggled to orient themselves and make sense of the layout. Even one student who had visited New York City admitted they found the map confusing; they were all indeed more accustomed to traveling by car. Spatial reasoning, rather than novel vocabulary, seemed to be the main issue. We revisited this activity in the following class session with additional scaffolding, i.e., instructor-created simplified and reduced visuals with fewer lines and stops.
We did not have time to complete Activity 7 during the VR session; it was pushed to the next class session. For homework, students were asked to write a postcard from Vienna (Activity 8), reflecting on what they had seen in the videos and reporting their impressions to someone unfamiliar with the city. This gave them a chance to process the experience and express it in a familiar format. In hindsight, the results were overwhelmingly strong and positive—the students clearly enjoyed the task and put thought into their writing.
Discussion
With this paper, we want to highlight that different instructors might experience different challenges with their students and that the success of a VR lesson plan does not only depend on the sequencing of activities but also on the instructor’s ability to solve students’ concerns, their familiarity with the technology employed and pedagogical approach to the same lesson, and students’ previous experiences and their perception of the VR environment.
From an instructor perspective, there were some similarities and differences in the strategies employed, as well as the challenges encountered with the lesson as intended. Both instructors did synchronous and asynchronous activities to frame the pre-exposure and post-reflection phases. For instance, both sections listened to an introductory presentation about Vienna and Austria by co-author Bastian De Monte, which included lexical items, cultural insights, and personal experience about living in Vienna. Moreover, making the postcard from Activity 8 homework and having the class share and provide feedback on their postcards at the very end of the Vienna unit gave the students an opportunity to recall their memories from VR and allowed for excitement in their shared experience. As pointed out above, Trevor Teafatiller had his students participate in a pictionary exercise as pre-exposure and this practice decreased the amount of time it took for his students to connect vocabulary with visual input from the worksheet. Bastian De Monte, on the other hand, elected for an additional creative post-reflection activity, namely a word-body map, whereby the students were asked to draw a human figure representing themselves and to write the names of cities on different parts of the body based on the student’s own personal connections with them. The result of the word-body map activity was that a majority of students included both German cities and/or Vienna placed near the head or heart, and one student even drew themself wearing a VR headset. These simple interventions show that adjustments to the lesson plan are possible and can elicit a range of responses from the students, including emotional and memory-related ones.
The example images from Picture 9 showcase a representative sampling of word-body mapping done by students as a creative post-reflection activity. Student A depicted themself wearing a VR headset and emphasized the topic of Vienna; Student B divided the figure into two halves indicating locations they “Have Visited” (left side of the body) and “Want To Visit” (right side of the body), including Vienna as an aspirational destination; Student C listed a large number of cities, with examples like Vienna and several German cities, although no clear pattern of preference is evident other than perhaps placement on the body (Vienna is positioned below the neck); and Student D chose to feature six specific cultural landmarks of Vienna that were included in the VR lesson, and notably one location name was followed by an exclamation point (Hofburg!).
Different facilitation strategies were used during the VR session itself. While Trevor Teafatiller checked in with smaller groups to assess comprehension, Bastian De Monte mostly opted to bring all students back into plenary discussions. Although the latter approach effectively brought everyone onto the same page and provided additional instructor-mediated input in the target language, it proved time-consuming and led to the postponement of Activity 7 to the following class session. That being said, the speed and pace with which students collaborate on, and complete, activities is an aspect that cannot be ignored.
Specific activities posed varying degrees of difficulty. Activity 6a/b for interpreting the subway map was an element that proved exceptionally difficult for the students. Likewise, the reliance on personal mobile devices for Activity 7a led to inconsistent experiences for students. These challenges indicate the need for more structured pre-exposure in future iterations to support smoother implementation, such as guided vocabulary activities for map-reading (Activity 6a/b) or a pre-designed navigation route (Activity 7a).
Immediate student feedback was predominantly positive. While most students had prior experience with virtual reality, about a quarter had none and noted the novelty of the experience. The VR tour of Vienna was universally seen as a valuable tool for enhancing their understanding of both the German language and culture, with none finding it ineffective. By and large, students felt the VR lesson complemented the Vienna module well and enriched the course curriculum, especially in the domain of cultural competence. The ability to visually explore the city’s surroundings was particularly appealing, and cultural insights (e.g., building architecture, public spaces, and observing everyday mannerisms) were key takeaways.
While overall impressions were positive, some students expressed that they faced certain challenges, including discomfort from the immersive VR experience and the few technical issues noted above in the reports. A common suggestion for improvement was the inclusion of more spoken German in the videos, as several students wanted greater exposure to comprehensible German language use in addition to the visual input. Others, however, appreciated the mixed aural environment of the diegetic sound featured in the videos, finding it added to the authenticity and immersion. There were also remarks about the video quality, which may have been affected by factors such as internet connectivity and the resolution of the original recordings done by each respective YouTube content creator.
However, based on student feedback, the VR lesson will remain a part of our curriculum. We will make adjustments to better scaffold the experience. In particular, we plan to increase preparatory work outside of class, such as vocabulary and grammar tasks, to allow for a greater focus on discussion and navigation activities during the limited classroom time.
Conclusion
Overall, the VR lesson was successful in fostering cultural understanding and student engagement. By integrating student feedback and reflecting on instructional strategies, we aim to refine the lesson for future cohorts. We hope that the insights provided in this article contribute to the broader conversation on the use of immersive technology in language and culture instruction.
References
Chun, D. M., Karimi, H., & Sañosa, D. J. (2022). Traveling by Headset. CALICO Journal, 39(2), 129-149.
Kaplan-Rakowski, R., Papin, K., & Hartwick, P. (2023). Language teachers’ perceptions and use of extended reality. CALICO Journal, 40(1), 1-23.
Levak, N., & Son, J. B. (2017). Facilitating second language learners’ listening comprehension with Second Life and Skype. ReCALL, 29(2), 200-218.
Parmaxi, A. (2020). Virtual reality in language learning: A systematic review and implications for research and practice. Interactive learning environments, 31(1), 172-184.