Open Auditorium—A human-centric extended reality blended learning tool

Growing interest in extended reality and artificial intelligence (AI) over the past decade has led to the development of a variety of powerful methods with considerable potential for blended learning. However, with great power comes great responsibility. To date, blended learning tools still struggle with the incorporation of practical regulations, preserving natural human presence in the use of AI systems (AIS). This article introduces Open Auditorium (OA), an extended reality blended learning (XR-BL) tool with human-centric ethical conditions of use (COU). Building on conceptual guidelines from previous studies, OA requires educators and learners to be natural human actors, while AIS assume vital yet strictly supportive roles. Furthermore, OA combines a diverse range of input modalities and interactions from pedagogy, extended reality and AI with blended learning. Designed for researchers, educators, and learners, OA aims to make research, teaching, and learning more interactive and expressive. The software architecture of OA is based on the Robot Operating System (ROS) and open source, providing a modular tool that encourages further community-driven research and development. This technology and code article summarizes key design steps, essential features, hardware and software architecture, and implementation of the tool, including a comparison between selected ethical and unethical use cases. Ultimately, this work could provide a reference for the design and implementation of future similar tools and help decision-makers to facilitate a responsible use of AIS in education.