Eyes, Ears, Mouth, and Presence: Designing a Human-Centered Hybrid Classroom for Natural Interaction

Hybrid classrooms that feel genuinely human remain difficult to achieve despite sustained post-pandemic investment. Most current solutions still privilege content delivery over social presence, with remote participants positioned as observers rather than participants in a shared learning space. This paper presents the design philosophy and interim evaluation of the All the DHBWorld is One project, a multi campus initiative across four DHBW sites. It is organized around a simple but operational principle: remote participants require Eyes (visual access to the room), Ears (reliable audio), a Mouth (the ability to speak and be seen), and a Presence (a defined location within the room’s social geometry). A central assumption of the design is that these elements must not be fragmented across devices and interfaces. When visual, auditory, and expressive channels are separated, interaction becomes effortful and unnatural. The new design therefore brings these elements together into a single coherent representation of the remote participant within the room. Findings from two pilot sessions suggest that technical predictability, especially automated AV switching, is a precondition for teacher adoption. More importantly, the display-as-body concept appears to shift how remote participants are perceived, promoting them from peripheral viewers to socially situated actors. The paper concludes by outlining design principles for scalable, low cost hybrid classroom implementations.