Investigating the Impact of Interactive Immersive Virtual Reality Environments in Enhancing Task Performance in Online Engineering Design Activities

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to test the hypothesis that immersive virtual reality environments such as those achievable through the head-mounted displays, enhance task performance in online engineering design activities. In this paper, task performance is measured by the time to complete a given engineering activity. Over the last decade, a wide range of virtual reality applications have been developed based on non-immersive and immersive virtual reality systems for educational purposes. However, a major limitation of non-immersive virtual reality systems is the lack of an immersive experience that not only provides content to students, but also enables them to interact and learn in a completely 360 degree immersive environment. The authors of this work have developed a replica of a physical engineering laboratory in an interactive virtual learning environment. This research measures the difference in task performance between i) students exposed to an immersive virtual reality system and ii) students exposed to a non-immersive virtual reality system, in the interactive virtual environment developed by the research team. This research seeks to explore whether statistically significant differences in performance exist between these groups. Knowledge gained from testing this hypothesis will inform educators about the value and impact of immersive virtual reality technologies in enhancing online education. A case study involving 54 students in a product functional analysis task is used to test the hypothesis.

Immersive virtual reality as a pedagogical tool in education: a systematic literature review of quantitative learning outcomes and experimental design

“…Three of the four studies that attempted to utilise I-VR as a means of teaching procedural skills showed a distinct advantage over less immersive methods. Bharathi and Tucker (2015) found that engineering students were faster in assembling a household appliance in a virtual functional analysis activity in I-VR compared to D-VR. Yoganathan et al (2018) also found that medical students were more accurate in knot tying practice when using I-VR as a training tool as opposed to a control group who used a standard video.…”

“…Twentyseven of the included studies (93%) used test scores to assess learning outcomes, with the majority using this as their sole method. There were four studies that used completion time as a metric of learning outcome, although only one study (Bharathi and Tucker 2015) used this method exclusively. There was one study (Sankaranarayanan et al 2018) that used the correct order of operation in a procedural task as one of its main outcome measures.…”

“…Generally, the exception to this was when the I-VR exposure lasted as long as it took the participant to complete a specific task, assessment, or procedure within the immersive environment (e.g. Babu et al 2018;Bharathi and Tucker 2015;Greenwald et al 2018;Sankaranarayanan et al 2018). Molina-Carmona et al 2018supplemented the limited intervention duration by allowing participants to take the HMD away with them, so they could access the educational content for 2 weeks outside the classroom.…”

Aplicações educacionais com óculos de realidade virtual: um Mapeamento Sistemático

“…Alguns trabalhos que testaram uma aplicação RV apenas com interação não-natural, não obtiveram resultados satisfatórios. Por parte dos usuários, uma interação natural pode fornecer melhor imersão, como apresentado em [Bharathi and Tucker 2015], porém segundo [Gong et al 2015], quandoé necessário precisão, as interações não-naturais são melhores. Por exemplo, ao se locomover usando uma interação natural o usuário teria que movimentar as pernas com precisão, caso contrário, com movimento errado não seria possível realizar a ação.…”

A Point-Based Virtual Reality System for Supporting Product Development

“…Recently inexpensive stereoscopic devices were developed for computer games. These devices can be potentially used in a variety of product development phases [1]. However, it is time-consuming to create 3D virtual scenes if the user has to create many 3D models.…”