Development and effectiveness of a virtual workshop integrated with artificial intelligence for engineering workshop practices

Abstract

Virtual workshop, an innovative educational application, is designed for teaching workshop practices, particularly in higher educational institutions, to provide an immersive, interactive and scalable learning environment. Unlike traditional physical workshops or 2D simulations, virtual reality (VR) enabled platform can offer hands-on training with realistic 3D models of machines and tools. This paper examined the development of a virtual workshop integrated with pre-trained artificial intelligence (AI) for learning engineering workshop practice and evaluate its effectiveness across Meta Quest headsets and PCs platforms. The workshop platform was developed in a user-friendly virtual environment. A quasi-experimental, pre-test, post-test and control group design study was conducted using the virtual workshop with 30 s-year engineering students, randomly selected as study participants from a university in Nigeria. Study participants were divided into control group exposed to conventional instruction, experimental group I exposed to an immersive VR delivered through a Meta Quest (VR-MQ), and experimental group II exposed to an immersive VR accessed through a PC (VR-PC) with 10 participants each. The researchers’ developed engineering workshop practice achievement test was used for pre- and post-test assessments and analysed using ANCOVA and Sidak post hoc test. Participants exposed to VR-MQ and VR-PC strategies outperformed the control group in learning outcomes, highlighting the platforms’ learning effectiveness. However, the VR-PC did not yield statistically significant gains beyond those achieved by VR-MQ alone, suggesting that the core benefits of the developed virtual workshop lie in the immersive nature of the VR. Thus, the virtual environment’s engaging and immersive nature, enhanced by the AI for realistic interactivity, significantly improved learning.