Doctoral thesis defense: ‘Analysis of the potential of face-to-face and distance learning using immersive resources in virtual and augmented reality’.

Last Friday, 29th of November, Rocío del Pilar Sosa Fernández, member of the Audiovisual Studies Group, successfully defended her doctoral thesis. She obtained the qualification of Excellent Cum Laude, unanimously, as well as the international mention for her research stay at the University of Aalto in Finland. The thesis was under the supervision of Roi Méndez Fernández, a lecturer at the Faculty of Communication Sciences.

The jury was constituted by Julio Cabero Almenara, Professor at the University of Seville and President of the Committee; Hans Hummel, Associate Professor at the Open University of the Netherlands; and Marta Rodríguez, Professor at the University of Santiago de Compostela.

The knowledge acquired through this research has been incorporated into the European project CloudClass (Low Cost, Mobile, Cloud & Template Based Augmented Reality Studio for Education), within which it is situated. This integration has been made possible through a collaborative effort between the company Brainstorm Multimedia and the University of Santiago de Compostela.

The thesis addresses the utilisation of the Edison tool, a software platform for the creation of real-time mixed reality presentations, by educators, learners and other academic stakeholders. The doctoral student highlighted the necessity of developing additional use cases across diverse fields, domains of knowledge, and academic levels to substantiate the potential applications of the technology. This endeavour will be facilitated by the forthcoming formulation of a white paper on the utilisation of virtual television technology in education and the continued advancement of VIRTUS ( The USC’s technological platform for virtual research).