Abstract-Virtual Reality (VR) is a well-known concept and has been proven to be beneficial in various areas. However, several disadvantages inherent in VR prevent its broad deployment in the educational arena. These limitations include non-realistic representation, lack of customizability and flexibility, financial feasibility, physical and psychological discomforts of the users, simulator sickness, etc. In this paper, an innovative method that uses the Microsoft Kinect as an essential component for developing game-based VR educational laboratories is presented. This technique addresses three different aspects. First, it represents an efficient method for creating the VE using the Kinect as a measuring tool. Second, the Kinect is employed as a substitute DAQ system for acquiring range data and tracking the motion of objects of interest. At last, the Kinect serves as a novel human-computer interface for tracking the users' entire body motion and recognizing their voices. Using the method described here, three major aspects of educational VR development can be accomplished with an inexpensive and commercially available Kinect.

Online learning environments are rapidly becoming viable options for offering students a bridge from theoretical concepts to practical engineering applications. They represent collections of integrated tools that provide a delivery mechanism for rich learning content, advanced assessment capabilities as well as affordable access to a wide range of educational resources. Such online learning environments have been used at Stevens Institute of Technology (SIT) for a number of years to provide undergraduate engineering students with a comprehensive laboratory experience based on content-rich and flexible remote and virtual laboratory experiments. These Web-based educational tools were developed using various open source programming languages and free software applications. As discussed in this article, these open source components form a powerful combination for the cost-efficient development, implementation and sharing of Web-based virtual experimentation systems. This article describes the delivery methods for online experiments and the corresponding software modules implemented, which were integrated into a comprehensive student laboratory experience currently being used at SIT in a sophomore-level core undergraduate course on solid mechanics taken by all undergraduate engineering majors as well as in a junior-level course on mechanisms and machine dynamics for mechanical engineering majors. Furthermore, some results of the learning outcomes assessment for online experiments conducted over several years at SIT are summarized.ß2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng

This paper presents the development of a game‐based virtual laboratory environment for gear train design. This virtual laboratory environment goes beyond static demonstrations or conventional computer simulations and provides the students with the flexibility to perform various experiments related to the fundamental law of gearing and the concepts of planetary gear motion. In this virtual laboratory environment, the students, the instructor and the teaching assistant are represented by and interact as virtual characters (avatars). The scripted scenario for the laboratory exercise was first piloted in a junior‐level course for mechanical engineering majors. Assessment tools such as pre‐ and post‐experiment tests are an integral part of the laboratory environment and form the basis for providing different levels of support to the students at every step of the laboratory exercises. Furthermore, the laboratory environment can be equipped with functionality for monitoring the students' progress and learning outcomes, thus enabling skill‐based assessment.© 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 22:788–802, 2014; View this article online at http://wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/cae; DOI

Currently, information technology (IT) is playing a significant role in the development of learning environments. The integration of IT into the classroom provides innovative learning environments that allow for more interactive, relevant, and effective applications to give students valuable experiences. This article presents the design and implementation of more active and collaborative methods of teaching and learning in a course on mechanisms and machine dynamics. Through the use of virtual collaborative environments such as cooperative learning, problem-based learning (PBL), critical thinking, and more in the context of IT-enabled environments, students are given the opportunity to experiment with ideas and see the results of their efforts on the computer screen. These interactive learning modules impose more responsibility on students for their own learning than the traditional lecture-based passive learning methodology. ß

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