Journal article
Using head mounted display virtual reality simulations in large engineering classes: Operating vs observing
Andrew Valentine, Tom Van der Veen, Patrick Kenworthy, Ghulam Mubashar Hassan, Andrew Guzzomi, R Nazim Khan, Sally A Male
AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY | AUSTRALASIAN SOC COMPUTERS LEARNING TERTIARY EDUCATION-ASCILITE | Published : 2021
DOI: 10.14742/ajet.5487
Abstract
A barrier to using head mounted display (HMD) virtual reality (VR) in education is access to hardware for large classes. This paper compares students’ learning when engaging with an HMD VR simulation as the operator and as the observer, to evaluate whether benefits of HMD VR can be achieved without requiring all students to operate the equipment. Postgraduate engineering students (N = 117) completed a safety hazard identification exercise in a workshop. The performance of students who operated and observed was compared. Results showed that students performed similarly in the exercise that followed the simulation whether they operated HMD VR (n = 33) or observed (n = 84). The finding suggests..
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Funding Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the students who agreed to participate in the research. The authors acknowledge Safe Work Australia and the regulatory bodies that assisted with identification of the design to be simulated. Development, embedding, and testing of the simulation was supported by The University of Western Australia Education Enhancement Unit. Support for the overarching project Virtual Work Integrated Learning for Engineering Students has been provided by the Australian Government Department of Education, The University of Western Australia, CingleVue International, Curtin University, Engineers Australia, the Australian Council of Engineering Deans, The University of Queensland and Murdoch University. The views in this paper do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian Government Department of Education or project partners.