In future, students at Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development (HNEE) will be able to experience the structure of wood as a raw material in virtual reality. The implementation of the joint project “Alice in Wood-Land” is funded by the Foundation for Innovation in Higher Education.

The aim of the project is to use a radical change of perspective to teach students about the anatomical structure of wood in a new way. In contrast to the conventional microscopic approach, the aim is not only to change the dimensional relationships, but also the students' perspectives. By creating a virtual reality (VR), similar to the story of Alice in Wonderland, the viewer will be able to immerse themselves in the respective three-dimensional specimen and explore the structure and anatomical features from the inside. In a further step, this virtual reality will then be expanded with a view to wood anatomical issues (augmented reality, AR) in order to make it possible to experience specific scenarios in a playful way.

High-resolution SRµCT data enables a three-dimensional representation with a resolution in the sub-µm range, which is equivalent in its spatial resolution to the 2D light microscopic visualizations of practical laboratory exercises. By changing perspective into the 3D space of the wooden body, students will be able to explore the respective wooden body in virtual reality and experience its complex structure. Through this experience in virtual reality, they will not only gain a deeper understanding of the arrangement and orientation of different cell types, but the implementation of augmented reality will also give them the opportunity to apply their newly acquired understanding to various tasks in virtual space. The level of difficulty of the tasks should allow the virtual learning environment to be adapted to the respective level of knowledge of the students in the respective study phase (use with basic knowledge vs. use with in-depth knowledge). Interaction between students in VR should be made possible, allowing students to learn from and with each other in virtual space.