New Perspectives for Engineering Education – About the Potential of Mixed Reality for Learning and Teaching Processes

Katharina Schuster (), Anja Richert and Sabina Jeschke
Additional contact information
Katharina Schuster: IMA/ZLW & IfU, RWTH Aachen University
Anja Richert: IMA/ZLW & IfU, RWTH Aachen University
Sabina Jeschke: IMA/ZLW & IfU, RWTH Aachen University

A chapter in Automation, Communication and Cybernetics in Science and Engineering 2015/2016, 2016, pp 407-416 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The majority of mixed reality scenarios have been mainly the subject of game engines. ‘Mixed Reality’ describes the combination of virtual environments and natural user interfaces. Here, the user’s field of view is controlled by his natural head movements via a head mounted display. Data gloves e.g. allow direct interaction with virtual objects and omnidirectional treadmills enable unrestricted navigation through a virtual environment by natural walking movements. To evaluate perspectives and potential for the use of mixed reality settings within engineering education an experimental study has been carried out, focusing on the impact of spatial presence and flow on cognitive processes. To assess the effects of natural user interfaces on cognitive processes, a two-group-plan (treatment and control group) was established. The mixed reality simulator was used as main stimulus of the treatment group whereas the control group used a laptop as interaction device. The learning environment was kept constant over both groups. The data were collected and interpreted with quantitative methods. Constraints of data collection exist since the influence of the hardware can only be evaluated within a set of independent variables, which consists of a combination of different user interfaces to a mixed reality simulator. Thereby not all of the disruptive factors could be eliminated. In this paper the study and the detailed results are described, which showed advantages especially regarding affective and motivational factors of virtual environments for cognitive processes. In particular, the depth of the resulting spatial presence and the phenomenon of flow are discussed. The paper closes with a discussion of the question, to what extend such innovative technologies establish new possibilities for educational sciences and pedagogics, especially focusing on engineering education and the field of virtual experiments.

Keywords: Immersion; Spatial Presence; Flow; Learning; Natural User Interfaces; Engineering Education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-319-42620-4_32

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783319426204

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-42620-4_32

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().