Previous studies have found that there is a strong correlation between the social presence of a teacher and perceived performance of students, and that an increased cognitive load decreases the effectiveness in problem solving. The objective of this study was to find out to what extend holograms can be used to improve the social presence of the teacher and reduce the cognitive load within distance learning. This was done by recording a lecture and using that recording to represent the teacher in different ways: a zoom lecture with a small video of the teacher on the slides as a control group, slides with the head of the teacher on a telepresence robot, slides with the teacher on a holographic screen and a lecture in a VR environment. 22 participants filled in questionnaires about the social presence and cognitive load after attending one of the 4 lecture types. The small number of participants made it hard to find any significant differences between the lecture groups while using non-parametric tests but the medians hinted that the VR lecture improved the social presence of the teacher compared to the zoom lecture and the telepresence robot lecture reduced the cognitive load compared to the zoom lecture.

This study examines the effects of holograms when used for online learning. The research question is: "How does a holographic teacher projection affect engagement of the students with the learning material?". The engagement of students was compared in different lectures. The base lecture was a zoom lecture. The holographic lectures were a VR lecture, a HoloDisplay lecture and a robot lecture. A big experiment was done where different people attended one of those 4 lectures. After the participants were done watching the lectures they had to fill in questionnaires. The data of these questionnaires was then used to compare the lectures. The main conclusions are that Zoom lectures definitely take more attention than holographic lectures. Another conclusion was that the HoloDisplay and the Robot lecture are more engaging than a normal zoom lecture, this conclusion was backed up with statistical tests. There was no evidence that either the HoloDisplay or the Robot lecture was more engaging than the other one. Both of them need to be looked into further and be developed further. These ways of teaching can definitely be the future of online learning.

Distance learning brings all sorts of advantages. The ability to follow lectures at home can save people transportation costs and time. Teaching through videoconferencing software such as Zoom is one of the methods to learn remotely. To explore new and better teaching methods, the possibility of using a telepresence robot is investigated. To determine its worth, an experiment is done to compare the learning outcomes of telepresence robot lectures to Zoom lectures. Differences in risk of eye-strain is also compared, as most distance learning methods are digital. An increase in risk of eye-strain may negatively impact the choice of adopting the learning method. Due to the small sample size, non-parametric tests were conducted. Concluding from the research, neither Zoom nor telepresence robot lectures had better learning outcomes compared to the other. The learning outcomes of both lectures were similar. Risks of eye-strain also did not differ between the two. Further analysis was done comparing the telepresence robot lecture with a hologram and a virtual reality lecture, as these were also part of the experiment. Similarly to zoom, there was no significant evidence that telepresence robot lectures had different learning outcomes or risks of eye-strain than holograms and virtual reality lectures.

Deficiencies in online communication software inspired the HoloLearn project that proposes to aid hybrid education via a hologram. Yet the epistemic and psychological effects of this medium remain largely uncharted. To help integrate the hologram into a hybrid education system, the present study conducted experiments which explored the nature of the hologram itself. With a lecture on Japanese History until 1603, this research compared the hologram's twofold effects on students with Zoom, an already popular option for online lecturing. The study concludes that there is no statistically significant difference between the two teaching modalities, and also suggests that the hologram, depending on the viewer, can be either engaging or distracting. Flaws in experimental design and other external constraints might have exerted some influence on these findings.

This study aims to examine the implications of bringing holographic projections – based on the TU Delft’s project ”HoloLearn” – into VR environment. With the spiked interest in remote communication caused by COVID-19, the demand for more immersive virtual conference software grows. And as Virtual Reality as a product becomes more affordable and practical for end-users, there is a room for researching the combination of two technologies. In particular, the implications holograms in VR have on the lecturer’s social presence and user’s exhaustion & fatigue. Hence, we designed a between-subject experiment intended to measure the audience’s perception of the lecturer’s social presence and user’s exhaustion & fatigue between setups with Zoom, screen-based holograms, and holograms in VR. A total of 17 participants, 5-6 per group, undertook an academic lecture in different formats and filled in a survey about their experience. The results concluded little to no statistically significant difference between researched groups on social presence and exhaustion & fatigue.