Virtual Reality in Engineering Education: A CIM Case Study

Instructors in technical schools, polytechnics, and universities of technology must continually help students find the links between theory and practice. Students often don't recognize the links among the various subjects they study, or the links among the various tasks they perform as they study. It is well known that students learn best by doing. This is especially true in science education where important concepts within the curriculum are acquired through experimentation and manipulation. Virtual Reality (VR) helps instructors motivate students to discover those essential links in a fresh, exciting educational environment which develops well-rounded thinking and real-world behaviors. VR has been shown to be an effective way of teaching difficult concepts to learners. VR system has been described in this paper. Applications of VR in education are discussed and a case study is given for the Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) course in Eastern Mediterranean University Mechanical Engineering Department. Introduction: The last decade has been witness to significant change across broad areas of our physical, social and cultural systems. These changes are clearly reflected in the growth and development of computer technology with applications in such diverse areas as credit cards, mobile phones, cars and cameras as well as the ubiquitous PC. Education has also had to accommodate change reflected in an ever-growing student population, which occupy places on existing or newly developed courses covering a very broad range of subject areas. These changes in the educational system and the provision it makes have often to be achieved with little if any rise in institutional costs or resources. Given that a main contributor to the cost overhead are the teachers educational institutions employ, the number of staff employed has not risen, indeed, in some cases there has even been a reduction. The ramifications of these changes are increasing the student/staff ration, reduction in student contact hours which, if conventional educational practices persist, would lead to a diminishing quality in the learning experience offered. Such pressures on the educational system have come at a time when the cost of computing equipment has been reducing whilst the capability increases leading to a growing interest in Computer Aided Learning and Teaching (CAL and CAT) systems employing a variety of approaches. Lockard, Abrams, and Many (1994) identified two general groups of CAL/CAT application systems: Type 1 involved using computer resources to do activities carried out at present without the aid of computers whilst Type 2 applications involved using computers to enable teaching and learning in ways that had not been possible employing conventional teaching approaches. Type 1 applications do not generally change the teaching strategy but do assist in making learning independent as well as helping to reduce the need for direct teacher involvement. Whilst these approaches may assist in alleviating problems associated with direct contact hours, they may not contribute much to the quality of the learning experience. With a growing capability in computer technology, new techniques and approaches to learning have and are being developed to enable provision of a learning experience not previously possible. This has given rise to the applications identified as Type 2 into which the system described in this paper may be classified. Engineering educators need to develop graduates with attributes and abilities previously not considered core to their professional practice. Developments in technology and science provide new tools and approaches to facilitate better learning-teaching environment. The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology – TOJET April 2003 ISSN: 1303-6521 volume 2 Issue 2 Article 8 52 Virtual Reality is a powerful computer based tool for education since people comprehend images much faster than they grasp lines of text or columns of numbers. Participation is critical to learning and VR offers multi-sensory immersive environments that engage students and allow them visualize information. Virtual Reality: Virtual Reality (VR) systems have the potential to allow learners to discover and experience objects and phenomena in ways that they cannot do in real life. The aim of VR is to achieve a maximum sense of reality for the user within a computer generated environment. In a unique way, a sense of presence has to be established between the user and the computer. At present, VR systems can be categorized into four different set-ups as: Desktop system, Wide-screen projection system, Immersive CAVE system, and Immersive VR system using head-mounted displays (HMDs). Desktop VR resembles the typical human–computer interaction (HCI) most closely. It uses the monitor as the viewing device, and a mouse, keyboard or glove for interaction. Together with a computer, which is capable of displaying the virtual model in real time, and a suitable VR software package, this arrangement often forms the entry system to VR applications. Wide-screen projection is used to increase the field of view (FOV) from 20–30° with a monitor to over 100°, or if multiple projection screens are used, the projection can fill the entire viewing area. A set-up with multiple projection, usually three walls and the floor, is called a CAVE and is by far the most expensive VR platform. Shutter glasses, which provide stereo vision, complete this very effective immersive VR system. VR using an HMD offers a much more affordable immersive system. Two displays are mounted into a helmet, which provides the user with a stereoscopic image of the model. The HMD is position tracked in real time and the images are updated according to the user’s position and orientation. A keyboard and mouse cannot be used because they are invisible to the user, but a 6 degree of freedom (6 DOF) interactive device is used instead. There are three major categories for the available VR software as: Toolkits, Program Languages, and Authoring systems. Toolkits are programming libraries, generally for C or C++ that provides set of functions with which a skilled programmer can create VR applications. Program Languages are specially developed programming languages for 2-D and 3-D VR applications, such as VRML and Java 3D. Authoring Systems are complete programs with graphical interfaces for creating worlds without resorting to detailed programming. These usually include some sort of scripting language in which to describe complex actions, so they are not really non-programming, just much simpler programming. The programming libraries are generally more flexible and have faster renders than the authoring systems, but you must be a very skilled programmer to use them. Regardless of the VR type and VR system, the following advantages can be obtained by using VR: 1. They provide a sense of scale, from motion parallax and the stereo view. 2. There is ease of interaction with complex components using 3D input devices. 3. Skill acquisition is improved. 4. It is a unique way to study complex interactions. 5. Improved understanding is gained through direct interaction. The simplest way for creating VR is to use VR Toolkit and the cheapest type is the Desktop VR, where user may only need better graphical card then he/she already have. Applications of VR in Education: Recent developments in VR have made it a more advanced computer technology, and attracted increasing amounts of attention among researchers in many educational disciplines. The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology – TOJET April 2003 ISSN: 1303-6521 volume 2 Issue 2 Article 8 53 As the technologies of virtual reality evolve, the applications of VR become literally unlimited. It is assumed that VR will reshape the interface between people and information technology by offering new ways for the communication of information, the visualization of processes, and the creative expression of ideas. Note that a virtual environment can represent any three-dimensional world that is either real or abstract. This includes real systems like buildings, landscapes, underwater shipwrecks, spacecrafts, archaeological excavation sites, human anatomy, sculptures, crime scene reconstructions, solar systems, and so on. Of special interest is the visual and sensual representation of abstract systems like magnetic fields, turbulent flow structures, molecular models, mathematical systems, auditorium acoustics, stock market behavior, population densities, information flows, and any other conceivable system including artistic and creative work of abstract nature. VR technology has been widely proposed as a major technological advance that can offer significant support for education. There are several ways in which VR technology is expected to facilitate learning. One of its unique capabilities is the ability to allow students to visualize abstract concepts, to observe events at atomic or planetary scales, and to visit environments and interact with events that distance, time, or safety factors make unavailable. The US Navy uses flight simulators to help train pilots for general navigation as well as special assignments. Battlefield simulations have been developed using real data from Desert Storm. These types of simulations can be used for training as well as planning. Distributed simulations allow users in remote locations to participate in the same environment. Training tools can also be used for common citizens. For example virtual cars could be used for driver's education classes reducing the expense of cars and insurance and perhaps minimizing costly accidents by inexperienced drivers. The types of activities supported by this capability facilitate current educational thinking that students are better able to master, retain, and generalize new knowledge when they are actively involved in constructing that knowledge in a learning-by-doing situation. VR off