6G Extended Reality Applications for Interactive Learning Experiences in Rural Schools

6G Extended Reality Applications for Interactive Learning Experiences in Rural Schools Cristian Patachia1[U−1700−038b−1786], Marius Iordache1[0000−0003−2747−6984], Ioan Constantin1[0000−0002−7540−4355], and Razvan Mihai1[0009−0000−7250−2825] Orange Romania SA, Bucharest 010144, Romania {cristian.patachia, marius.iordache, ioan.constantin, razvan.mihai}@orange.com https://5glab.orange.ro/en/ Abstract. The implementation of the 6G-PATH project in 2 rural schools in Romania aims to create captivating and interactive learning experiences that will help students improve their academic performance and reduce the discrepancies between students learning in rural and urban environments, respectively. Orange Romania (ORO) will provide data connectivity through the commercially deployed networks and access to a fully-fledged 6G Experimentation Platform equipped with latest generation of software and hardware solutions. A Virtual Reality (VR) Caravan, operated from Ias ,i, Romania, and both rural schools will have the necessary 5G coverage to ensure a good quality experience for the students and teachers. In addition to the necessary Extended Reality (XR) equipment, schools will also receive tablet computers and laptops to support their teaching experiences to ensure appropriate access to the Digitaliada platform and content creation processes. Keywords: 6G ·XR ·Education ·5G Testbed ·Orchestration. 1 Introduction The 6G-PATH Project aims to foster the development of new technologies supporting 6G, both in close collaboration with other 6G Smart Networks and Services Industry Association (6G-IA) projects and through the process of Open Calls to engage European companies developing innovations for Beyond-5G (B5G) and 6G systems, as well as bringing new Use-Cases (UCs) and pilot sites to the ecosystem. Such technologies and pilots will be combined in relevant platforms to be used by a set of applications in UCs corresponding to the four verticals where 6G-PATH will be present: Health, Education, Smart Cities and Farming. Overall, 6G-PATH will build an extensive B5G/6G infrastructure where a set of core architectures and domainspecific capabilities will be brought together and made available for integration of applications and Use Cases of relevance within the four addressed verticals, to conduct large-scale pilots and trials. The results of these pilots and trials will be collected and analysed in detail, to generate appropriate lessons and requirements for future 6G communications, as 2 C. Patachia et al. well as to identify, characterize and refine leading-edge business models towards the commercialisations and exploitation of 6G use cases and technologies. 2 XR in Rural Schools XR Rural School is one of the three UCs considered for the 6G-PATH pilots in the Education Vertical. This UC is championed by Orange Romania Foundation (OROF) and led by ORO. The principal goal of UC-EDU-1 is to enhance the teaching experience and materials, taught at general-school level in Romania. The use case will drive, through OROF’s “Digitaliada” platform and program, the necessary training so that teachers and other faculty staff can contribute. The trials for this user case will include: –Interactive multimedia content: A variety of multimedia resources, such as videos, animations, and 3D models, that allow students to explore learning subjects in a captivating and interactive way. –Personalized learning experiences: The platform will be designed to adapt the learning experience to the knowledge level and skills of each student. This could help improve students’ academic performance and contribute to reducing disparities between students from rural and urban environments, respectively. –Use of VR devices: The platform will be compatible with a variety of virtual and augmented reality devices, such as VR glasses or Augmented Reality (AR) supported mobile phones, to allow students to experience learning subjects in a more practical and interactive way. –Collaboration and interaction: The platform will allow students to collaborate and interact with each other and their teachers in a more innovative and engaging way. –Evaluation and monitoring: The platform will be designed to allow teachers to evaluate students’ performance and monitor their progress during the learning process. This could help identify areas for improvement and adapt the teaching material accordingly. 2.1 Motivation In Romania, digital education is still a privilege, as almost 38% [1] of children under 16 years old and 37.5% of young people aged 16-24 are at risk of poverty or social exclusion, a situation that is particularly widespread among those with a low level of education: almost 55% of people who have only completed primary school are exposed, according to Eurostat data, to poverty or social exclusion, with a significant proportion in rural areas. 45% of Romania’s kids come from rural areas and almost 30% [2] of them are unable to get a passing grade at the National Evaluation, which prevents them to access a high school and university studies. This means that several generations of kids’ chances of employment will be either in dirty, dull, and dangerous jobs or in domains which will provide 6G XR Applications 3 less chances of making a decent wage. At the same time, some of these jobs will be, within the next 20 years, subject to extinction due to robotization, automatization and machine learning. What all studies on the future of labor predict (from Oxford to World Economic Forum) is that IT and technology skills will be in high demand. Studies [3] within the “Digitaliada” program show that there is an important category of teachers who have an open attitude towards the use of new technologies and digital content in the classroom, across all types of schools, regardless of the level of technology. It is our use-case motivation to drive this attitude towards exploitable results in improving the academic performance of the students, and to reduce the gap in adoption and utilization of technologies in urban and rural schools, respectively. An equally important motivation is ORO’s and OROF’s commitment to drive the usage of technologies in education, and to improve the existing methods and processes using sustainable new technologies such as beyond-5G networks and Extended Reality technology. 2.2 Key Pain points considered for the XR Rural School Use-Case Our research identified the following pain points regarding the implementation of XR technologies in Romanian schools: –Low availability of XR educational content tailored to the Romanian primary and secondary education curriculum. There is a lack of content being developed and distributed, mapped to the National curriculum for primary and secondary schools. While the technological advances are steadfastly making XR available to many new regions in rural areas, the content availability is lagging. This Pain Point should be addressed in 6G-PATH through the Open Calls for developers to construct XR platforms and services that allow content to be adapted to XR-world. –Low availability of equipment and IT resources in the rural schools of Romania. The rural areas of Romania lack funding and infrastructure required to adopt significant IT resources, including equipment, to enable the utilization of XR/VR/AR technologies. We aim to address this Pain Point, in 6G-PATH, through acquiring and deploying a functional set-up of portable computers – laptops, tablet computers and XR interfaces – VR headsets, actuators, control surfaces and control devices – to 2 rural schools and one mobile “VR Caravan”, to pilot the usage of beyond-5G-enabled technologies in Education. –Low adaptation of XR technologies in Education in the rural schools of Romania We aim to address this pain point, in 6G-PATH, through “teach the teacher” engagement, co-ordinated by OROF through the “Digitaliada” platform, to enable easy and replicable adaptation of their teaching tools and methods, to the usage of XR content. 4 C. Patachia et al. 3 The Use-Case Scenarios UC-EDU-1 relies on 2 scenarios [4] of implementing immersive education to 2 target rural schools and the deployment of a similarly equipped “VR Caravan”. Both scenarios will leverage the utilisation of ORO’s beyond-5G capabilities, in the testbed, extending to ORO’s commercial networks and will enable OROF and ORO to deploy “Digitaliada”, the educational platform developed by OROF through the 6G-PATH experimentation framework. “Digitaliada” will be deployed as a Network-aware application, with components and services in the ORO 5G Stand-Alone (5GSA) edge network, and will be improved with additional capabilities including: –5G readiness –XR-class devices management –XR content management –5G-enabled content delivery Furthermore, Third-party Network Applications will be able to interact with “Digitaliada” to enable the creation of, and deployment of XR content such as interactive and personalized learning experiences and simulations. The 6GPATH open calls will support the selection and integration activities for these third-party Network applications. During the Testbeds Upgrades and Extensions phase, ORO’s testbed will be updated to support the functional and operational requirements of UC-EDU-1, and to enable integration with the 6G-PATH platform’s components. During the integration phase of the two scenarios, the various 6G-PATH components will be deployed to ORO’s Testbeds and tested for interoperability with the 5G Core and edge components of ORO’s testbed. During the internal trials and pilots for the Education Vertical, the principal activities targeting the two scenarios of UC-EDU-1 will be: –Composition of ORO’s testbed and UC-EDU-1 to the 6G-PATH Platform – this activity will make use of several Experimentation Enabling Components to onboard the required assets of the UC components. –Deployment of the UC components to the 6G-PATH platform – this activity will encompass the creation the Use-Cases Repository assets for UC-EDU-1, such as the Use-Case images for the Network Applications to be deployed – “Digitaliada” and third-party applications through the 6G-PATH Open Calls. –Testing and validation of UC-EDU-1 – this activity will fall forward to the two test cases (“scenarios”) to validate the overall use-case ambitions and expected outcomes, supported through the KPIs and KVIs to be collected during the piloting. 3.1 XR in Rural Schools Scenario This scenario targets the deployment of an XR-enabled platform to two primary schools in rural areas of Romania. The two schools will be selected through 6G XR Applications 5 an internal evaluation process of OROF’s, building on top their demonstratable experience in working with primary education institutions, on several other projects and opportunities. During the piloting of this scenario, the principal actors will be the Testbed Operators and the End-Users, as follows: –Testbed Operators – will interact with the 6G-PATH platform to deploy the UC components, select the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Metrics for monitoring, choose the testbed features required for the piloting and initiate the piloting activities. –End-Users 1 – A selected group of teachers, from the two schools will be able to use “Digitaliada” to select and deploy XR-enabled content to End-Users 2’ schedule and create interactive learning experiences and simulations from pre-defined primitives. –End-Users 2 – Primary School pupils, in the two schools to be selected, will use “Digitaliada” through XR-enabled interactions with the XR UserEquipment (UE) to be deployed in the schools. 3.2 XR Caravan Scenario This second scenario targets the deployment of an XR-enabled platform to a purpose-equipped vehicle (for this purpose, a Caravan-class automobile) which will transit between rural areas near the town of Ias ,i, Romania, and support the dissemination of XR-enabled learning to the teachers and students, pupils in these rural areas. The principal purpose of this scenario is to demonstrate the mobility capabilities and features of the 6G-PATH platform. As for the first scenario, the principal actors of this pilot are: –Testbed Operators – will interact with the 6G-PATH platform to deploy the UC components, select the KPIs and Metrics for monitoring, choose the testbed features required for the piloting and initiate the piloting activities. –End-Users 1 – A selected group of teachers will be able to use “Digitaliada” to select and deploy XR-enabled content to a demonstration set-up, available in the XR-Caravan. –End-Users 2 – Primary school students and pupils will interact with the XRenabled platform, “Digitaliada”, during the Caravan’s visits to their localities. The expected outcome of UC-EDU-1 is a successful implementation of “Digitaliada” as a XR learning platform, in 2 rural schools in Romania and in one mobile deployment (“XR Caravan”), achieving the 6G-PATH KPIs, and leading to the validation of the Use-Case. Three goals have been considered for the validation of the pilot: –Improve learning outcomes of schools in rural areas through the provisioning of a digitalized, alternative content-rich platform with 6G XR immersive and interactive engaging experiences [5][6], “Digitaliada” can significantly improve the attrition rates in sparsely populated rural areas of Romania and visibly add to the learning experiences and performance results of the pupils. 6 C. Patachia et al. –Improve teacher attrition in schools in rural areas – “Digitaliada” will focus to provide a teach-the-teacher medium, rich in XR experiences thus achieving a slower slope for new hires and incumbent teachers, to gain knowledge in usage of new technologies for teaching their current curricula. In turn, this can improve retention of teachers to schools in rural areas. –Enhance awareness, availability, and accessibility of 6G XR-enabled learning tools by deploying “Digitaliada” XR learning experiences to a caravan through the North-Eastern parts of Romania, teachers and pupils in areas not covered through the fixed deployments, will experience the XR-enabled, improved teaching and learning methods and tools. 4 High Level Topology of UC-EDU-1 The high-level process for each experimenter, either internal to the project (example of OROF, as a champion of UC-EDU-1) or external, coming from the Open Calls should permit the experimenter to interact via the 6G-PATH platform’s frontend to access the experimentation dashboards which, in turn will allow them to select assets from the composition repositories: –Testbed features, Topology features which will determine the target testbed for the desired experimentation activity. –Metrics and KPIs features which will determine the baseline and benchmark characteristics for the desired experimentation measurement of outcomes. –Use-Cases Composition features to determine the overall scope and main flows of the experimentation. –Control the experimentation lifecycle to start or stop the experiment main flows. 4.1 The Key Components of UC-EDU-1 Integration in the scope of EC-EDU-1 will run in three distinct domains, comprising of the 6G-PATH Platform, ORO testbed infrastructure and ORO 5GSA Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) [7][8] deployment (and, if available at runtime, the 5G SA Commercial MEC deployment [9]). The 6G-PATH platform and components should be deployed in ORO’s testbed to support experimentation for third-party apps selected in the Open Calls process and should support the feature set selected by the third-party application developers and experimenters. During the project’s lifecycle, the 6G-PATH project consortium will support the deployment of components to target testbeds and / or to a centralized platform interfacing with the federated components in the testbeds. 4.2 ORO Testbed Facility for UC-EDU-1 ORO Testbed facility is in University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest [10] in a “5G Lab” [11] and remotely extended to 5G Lab in Ias ,i [12], a large city in the 6G XR Applications 7 Fig. 1. High level topology of UC-EDU-1 Fig. 2. ORO 5G Lab testbed architecture 8 C. Patachia et al. North-Eastern region of Romania, and implements a full 5G SA 3GPP Release 16 compatible infrastructure. ORO’s 5G Lab testbed is based on virtualized network infrastructure, for both 5G options [13], the NSA and SA variants. For the Non-Stand Alone (NSA) variant, the 5G Labs are connected to the commercial Long-term Evolution (LTE) Core Network. The NSA Core architecture is based on the virtual Evolved Packet Core (vEPC) solution from Ericsson, deployed in an OpenStack infrastructure. The existing core architecture can support broadband connectivity featuring configurable throughput values. For the existing core architecture, the 5G services are manually configured, by using dedicated QoS, traffic prioritization, private Access Point Names (APNs) and network provisioned capabilities in terms of throughput, as the main service that can be served is enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB). The SA Core architecture uses the 5G SA Compact Mobility Unit (CMU) [14] Core Network solution from Nokia, running on a proprietary virtualized infrastructure in the Bucharest 5G Lab datacentre. Three main components are integrated, the Cloud Mobile Gateway (CMG), the Cloud Mobility Manager (CMM), and the Authentication and Policy Control (APC). This platform is capable of delivering 3GPP-compliant network slicing [15][16], implementing one slice for eMBB traffic and another prioritized slice for Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC). The 5G Labs 5G SA RAN architecture follows the 3GPP Option 2; in this approach, as showcased in Figure 4, the RAN consists of only gNBs that are connected to the 5G Core network. The gNBs connect to AMF over the NG-C interface for control plane signaling and to UPF over the NG-U interface for user plane data transfer. gNBs provide the NR (New Radio) air interface access for the UEs. The deployed 5G SA RAN components also include support for network slicing, leveraging on priority management with differentiated 5G QoS flows, prioritized UE TCP sessions and 5G QoS flows to DRB mapping – in this approach the network maps different IP flows with the same QoS requirements into the same QoS flow. Connected to the 5G Core Network and RAN infrastructure, through an IPFABRIC [17] transport network, is the 5G Labs edge computing facility. This facility is shared between the two labs from Bucharest and Iasi and consists of 18 compute servers, totalizing in 270 CPU cores, 8 TB of RAM, 42 TB of storage and 6 GPUs (160 GB VRAM). The 5G Labs edge computing ecosystem supports multiple types of applications, ranging from bare metal solutions to virtualized or containerized variants based on three virtualization platforms - OpenStack [18], VMware ESXi [19] and Kubernetes [20]. The resulting modularized services, flexible and adaptable, can leverage on the configurable networking capabilities of the testbed, on the fast deployment cycles, and dynamic services launched in the network. 6G XR Applications 9 4.3 Upgrades and Extensions of the Testbed Facility During the lifecycle of the 6G-PATH project, ORO’s Testbed facility will be upgraded to support the requirements of UC-EDU-1 and 3rd party experiments from the Open Call program of the Project. Multiple upgrade and extensions activities will be performed simultaneously and the status for implementation will be available in the reporting and deliverables of 6G-PATH. The extensions and upgrade include interfaces definition, development and integration for the integration with the 6G-PATH Service Framework, extension of the 5G SA coverage to new locations to include the geographical areas of the Use-Case beneficiaries (the two rural schools), 6G-PATH network and services KPIs and data collection, and exposure to application layers [21] (for 3rd party experimenters) and full integration of the 6G-PATH Key Exploitable Results (KER) components to the UC-EDU-1 Framework. Part of these upgrades are further detailed in the following subsections. 4.4 Monitoring Analytics The integration of ORO’s testbed monitoring analytics capabilities into the 6GPATH local ecosystem of the 5G Lab testbed involves the utilization of advanced functions and systems to manage and analyze data across various elements of the network infrastructure. This integration includes the utilization of NSDAF (Network Slicing Data Analytics Function) to enhance the monitoring and management of network slices, focusing particularly on estimating energy and carbon footprints, analyzing resource usage, and optimizing performance across different virtualized environments. The NSDAF is designed to extend the capabilities of NWDAF (Network Data Analytics Function) [22][23] and MDAF (Management Data Analytics Function) [24][25][26] by specifically focusing on network slices. NSDAF, based on the communication architecture showcased in Figure 3, infers KPIs provided by NWDAF and MDAF to offer insights tailored to the needs of network slicing, such as: –Performance Metrics: Evaluating the efficiency and responsiveness of network slices based on real-time data analytics. –Resource Utilization: Monitoring how network slices consume bandwidth, compute, and storage resources, helping identify bottlenecks or underutilized assets. –Quality of Service: Ensuring that the network slices meet the agreed-upon service level agreements (SLAs) and user expectations. A key aspect of NSDAF’s role in the ecosystem is to estimate the energy and carbon footprint of network slices, including the contribution from edge-cloud resources that host vertical applications. This involves: –Analyzing Power Consumption: Detailed monitoring of how much energy each network slice consumes, taking into account the energy used by the underlying infrastructure, such as servers and network equipment. 16 C. Patachia et al. Fig. 10. Testing and validation of the UC-EDU-1 leveraging on the ELCM platform The platform leverages standard interfaces like TMForum APIs [31][32][33] and 3GPP specifications to enhance internal interoperability and expose functionalities to third parties. This approach not only aligns with ongoing standardization efforts but also promotes broader adoption and validation of these standards through real-world testing. The integration of INTENTIONAL into the 6G-PATH involves detailed planning across several phases—specification and design, implementation and testing, and support and evaluation. Each phase is designed to ensure that the platform not only meets the technical requirements of the ORO testbed but also contributes to the broader objectives of the 6G-PATH project, such as enhancing the testbed’s programmability and supporting more sophisticated intent-based management of services and networks. The project sets specific KPIs to measure its success, including the number of new standard APIs implemented, the integration of software components supporting intents, and the number of experiments utilizing these new capabilities. By simplifying the declaration and management of service intents, INTENTIONAL aims to lower the barrier for verticals and service providers to utilize advanced 5G and 6G functionalities. This not only enhances the operational capabilities of the ORO testbed but also positions it at the forefront of applying AI and automation in managing next-generation network services. The project’s success could lead to significant advancements in how network services are provisioned and managed, potentially influencing future standards and industry practices in the realm of 6G networks. 6 Conclusions The XR Rural Schools Use-Case, as an application and large-scale trial of the 6GPATH Project considers the technological enhancements of beyond-5G networks, 6G XR Applications 17 as enablers for advancement in the educational processes, leveraging the use of XR technology to drive improved attrition rates for school pupils, the ease of access to learning material and – to an important extent – the retention of teachers to schools in rural areas of Romania. By integrating Key Exploitable Results of the 6G-PATH Project to existing components such as “Digitaliada”, the online platform for content delivery to school teachers and pupils, ORO and OROF aim to validate the case for using 6G technology to create, deliver and manage XR content to end-users while supporting an open and accessible platform for third party experimenters and developers to test, validate and showcase their 6G-enabled applications. Acknowledgements This work was funded by the European Commission under the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme – grant agreement No. 101139172 (6G-PATH project). The paper solely reflects the views of the authors. The Commission is not responsible for the contents of this paper or any use made thereof. References 1. Eurostat – Household revenues in Romania [online], Available, Accessed March 2025, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statisticsexplained/index.php?title=Income_poverty_statistics/ro&oldid=526266. 2. 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