Virtual reality tools for enhancing interactive learning

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) technology is capable of constructing a user-centered, three-dimensional environment that is familiar to the student onto which abstract and complex information can be imposed. This virtual environment can stimulate interactive learning and comprehension, which are essential in engineering education. Despite these advantages, there are several barriers to the use of virtual reality in engineering education, including a lack of simple, easy-to-use, low cost software that can enable the instructor to build virtual environments for educational use. In this paper, we discuss our experiences in developing a virtual education program in biotechnology for Indian Hills Community College. This discussion includes the development of VE-Suite, an extensible, cross-platform, open source, freely downloadable library of tools that enable engineering education in a virtual environment Using this software, a virtual fermentor was developed, which not only allows students to explore the inner workings of the fermentation tank, but also to be able to simulate the fermentation process so they can test-run the virtual fermentor by varying the operation parameters and observe the results instantly. Finally, a human fector experiment was conducted to study the effectiveness of different data visualization methods that should be used in the virtual fermentor at facilitating students' self-paced learning.