The BIP EUGLOH Summer School “Immersive Media for Health and Well-being” featured the participation of students from five Universities of the EUGLOH Alliance.
The in-person intensive week of the BIP EUGLOH Summer School “Immersive Media for Health and Well-being” took place at the University of Porto from the 1st to the 5th of July. Coordinated by the University of Porto, the Blended Intensive Program (BIP) course aims to address the strategic challenge of the European Commission launched for the “Web 4.0 and virtual worlds”. Besides the University of Porto, which was this year's Host Institution, the Universities of Hamburg (Germany), Paris-Saclay (France), Novi Sad (Serbia) and Lund (Sweden) collaborated in this edition.
Participants, who were master’s or undergraduate (2nd year and up) students in computer science, computer engineering, maths, physics, arts or multimedia, were challenged to design and prototype Augmented and Virtual Reality solutions for applications focusing on health and well-being.
This edition was organised in a hybrid format and lasted for three weeks. From the 18th to the 20th of June, the activity was conducted virtually; from the 1st to the 5th of July it had its in-person component; and from the 8th to the 12th of July the lectures took place online, culminating in one final report.
António Coelho, professor at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP), Academic Leader of Work Package 4 and coordinator of this BIP stated, “From the use of game engines for developing interactive applications to the design and development of immersive environments, the participants understood the processes related to the design and development of immersive media solutions, acquiring skills to master this type of technologies and to evaluate their efficacy”.
The Blended Intensive Programmes (BIP) are the new proposal of the Erasmus+ Programme (2021-2027) and involve blended learning– online learning combined with short-term physical mobility – in an international consortium in which several European Higher Education Institutions participate, transnational teams, curricula, and collaborative activities.