Scale and Spatial Resolution Guidelines for the Design of Virtual Engineering Laboratories

Virtual Laboratories in a Virtual Learning Environment are indispensable spaces for developing practical activities. This paper proposes an integrated structure for Virtual Laboratories for undergraduate degree programmes in Computer Engineering and Software Engineering. The general structure proposed is based on the experience gained in designing and developing Virtual Laboratories during the past eleven years in a virtual university. Technological, pedagogical, strategic and academic staff resources are included in the Virtual Laboratories structure. The proposed structure has been applied to different computer areas and this paper presents the special case of a Virtual Programming Laboratory. Its effectiveness has been evaluated by the students using a web questionnaire.

In this paper, we present a virtual learning laboratory environment for undergraduate mathematics education using an inquiry-based learning approach. The Visible Thinking pedagogical framework is also suggested to achieve a good complement to traditional lecture–tutorial systems. The virtual laboratory is implemented in an open-access Java interactive software. We demonstrate a viable instruction procedure, providing a set of virtual laboratory activities with real-world applications spanning signal processing, data science and analytics, sustainable infrastructure engineering, and theoretical physics. A preliminary study on a pilot cohort indicates that the proposed virtual laboratory can enhance students’ learning. The virtual laboratory implementation is scalable and can be easily expanded in scope to other mathematical topics; transitioning to a tablet-based system for use in smart classrooms is also readily achieved. The Java interactive software is freely available on Open Science Framework.

The aim of the current research was to develop students' skills in designing computer circuits among computers and information students through the development of an integrated virtual educational environment represented in (Moodle platform -virtual lab -educational software -YouTube channel). The researcher used the descriptive method and the experimental research method by applying the model of "Abdul Latif Al-Jazzar" ( The research sample consisted of two groups, a control group and an experimental group, numbering (60) students, 30 students for one group on first-year computer students. After applying the research procedures on the experimental and control sample, and using statistical treatments, the results showed that there were statistically significant differences at the significance level (0.01) between the mean scores of the students in the post-application of the achievement test. And the observation card in favor of the post application between the two groups in favor of the experimental group One of the most important recommendations of the research is to create virtual environments in the scientific fields in general and in the field of computers and engineering.

Often, designers and developers of serious games (and virtual simulations in general) strive for high fidelity (realism). However, real-time high-fidelity rendering of complex environments across sensory modalities such as vision, audition, and haptic (sense of touch) is still beyond our computational reach. Previous work has demonstrated that multimodal effects can be considerable, to the extent that a large amount of detail of one sense may be ignored or enhanced by the presence of other sensory inputs. Taking advantage of such multimodal effects, perceptual-based rendering—whereby the rendering parameters are adjusted based on the perceptual system—can be employed to limit computational processing. Motivated by the general lack of emphasis given to the understanding of audio rendering in virtual environments and games, we have started investigating multimodal (audiovisual) interactions within such virtual environments. Our work has shown that sound can directly affect visual fidelity perception and task performance within a virtual environment. These effects can be very individualized, whereby the influence of sound is dependent on various individual factors including musical listening preferences, suggesting the importance of individualizing the virtual environment to each user. This chapter begins with an overview of virtual environments and serious gaming’s open problems, with an emphasis on fidelity, and multimodal interactions, and the implications that these may have on performance and computational requirements. A detailed summary of our own prior work will be provided along with insight and suggestions that may guide designers and developers of serious games and virtual learning environments in general. Although the chapter is contextualized in the use of serious games in health professions education, the information provided is generalizable across a variety of domains.

Laboratory courses play a pivotal role in higher education, and with emerging technologies transforming instructional practices, virtual laboratories have become an effective supplement to traditional, face-to-face settings. This paper presents a Unity3D-based virtual production line laboratory platform developed under the ADDIE instructional design model (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation). The physical assembly line was replicated in a virtual environment and deployed via WebGL on a custom website, enabling students to engage in experimental learning at any time.Additionally,On the student client, we have visualised PLC programs and designed an image recognition module that enables students to visually verify the correctness of their PLC programs. Implementation with second-year undergraduates demonstrated positive impacts on academic performance.

In practice, virtual laboratory has the advantages of high simulation, open sharing, scalability, reusability and high security, which can be used as a supplement and extension of classroom teaching to develop the experimental teaching of distance education and mixed learning. However, the more common virtual laboratories are mostly web-based "non-immersive" virtual laboratories, that is, desktop simulation virtual laboratories, mainly through the simulation operation of equipment and experimental process software. Therefore, the shortcomings of this "non-immersive" virtual laboratory are also very obvious, such as relying only on mouse and keyboard operation, and the immersion of practical experience and experimental effects is not strong. Immersive virtual experiment is the use of virtual reality technology to create immersive experimental interactive scenes. Learners can use certain equipment to enter the same space scene as the real lab for interactive operation and experience, and can train and practice repeatedly to obtain ideal data for analysis and processing. Students conduct systematic training from the perspective of professional English in a virtual simulation environment, and strengthen the comprehensive application ability of professional English in online virtual practice. For the experiments requiring hands-on participation of learners, immersive virtual laboratory is a developing trend, as well as an innovative and transformative teaching application.

Innovative Techniques in Instruction Technology, E-Learning, E-Assessment and Education is a collection of world-class paper articles addressing the following topics: (1) E-Learning including development of courses and systems for technical and liberal studies programs; online laboratories; intelligent testing using fuzzy logic; evaluation of on line courses in comparison to traditional courses; mediation in virtual environments; and methods for speaker verification. (2) Instruction Technology including internet textbooks; pedagogy-oriented markup languages; graphic design possibilities; open source classroom management software; automatic email response systems; tablet-pcs; personalization using web mining technology; intelligent digital chalkboards; virtual room concepts for cooperative scientific work; and network technologies, management, and architecture. (3) Science and Engineering Research Assessment Methods including assessment of K-12 and university level programs; adaptive assessments; auto assessments; assessment of virtual environments and e-learning. (4) Engineering and Technical Education including cap stone and case study course design; virtual laboratories; bioinformatics; robotics; metallurgy; building information modeling; statistical mechanics; thermodynamics; information technology; occupational stress and stress prevention; web enhanced courses; and promoting engineering careers. (5) Pedagogy including benchmarking; group-learning; active learning; teaching of multiple subjects together; ontology; and knowledge representation. (6) Issues in K-12 Education including 3D virtual learning environment for children; e-learning tools for children; game playing and systems thinking; and tools to learn how to write foreign languages.

The present study focuses on real and virtual labs used in unison to teach Physics. Should students be exposed to real experiments first and virtual labs afterwards, or could it be that the reverse is the best educational choice? For the investigation of this research question, the PCB301 mobile lab was used as a basic educational tool. It offers learners both real and virtual lab material, sensors with the data collection software, as well as matched simulations, thus presenting a complete experimental environment, available to be used for the understanding of science concepts. 65 third year High School learners participated, divided in two groups; thirty two for those experimenting first on a real and then on a virtual environment, and thirty three for the group working in the opposite order. The teaching subject under investigation was the study of electric circuits, with a focus on wiring, resistor features, the electric circuit, electric voltage, and the application of Ohm's law. As data research tools the DIRECT assessment was used, as well as semi-conducted interviews that took place at the end of the research activities. The results confirmed that learners' understanding is affected by the order the real and the virtual labs are used in teaching, when addressing this age group and teaching electric circuits.

Stakeholder needs and perceptions for metaverse-driven engineering education

The widespread adoption of virtual and remote laboratories has transformed practical education by offering scalable, safe, and flexible environments for developing technical skills. Despite these benefits, challenges remain in providing timely, meaningful feedback that supports self-regulated learning and improves student outcomes. In this study, we analyze anonymized interaction logs from a virtual laboratory system focused on Industrial Electrical Control Training Lab, used by 839 students enrolled in Electrical, Electromechanical, Mechanical, or Industrial Automation vocational programs offered by the National Service of Industrial Apprenticeship of Santa Catarina (SENAI/SC, Brazil). We introduce a novel methodology that combines sequential pattern mining (SPM) with automatic performance-based segmentation to analyze student behavior in virtual laboratory environments. Using interaction logs from students containing time-stamped cable connections and interface interactions, we segment learners into performance (High, Intermediate, and Low) based on the z-scores of accuracy and speed, using two strategies: (i) a K-means clustering approach, and (ii) a rule-based decision function. Building on this segmentation, we propose an algorithm to identify frequent action sequences and recurrent error patterns specific to each group. We further apply chi-square analysis to determine statistically significant associations between specific errors and performance profiles. Our findings indicate that students in the high-performance group are likely to refer to schematics beforehand, whereas those in the lower performance group frequently begin with montage connections. Inference analysis demonstrated that these segmented groups, for both the rule-based and K-means segmentation approaches, commit statistically distinct types of errors. These results can be integrated into LA dashboards to support real-time feedback for students and instructors, ultimately enhancing teaching strategies and learning in practical disciplines.

We present in this paper researches focused on specification and production of virtual training environments. The use of Virtual Environments (VE) for training is strongly stimulated by important needs of training on sensitive equipment. But the development of such applications is generally done in new projects, where the reusability of existing developments is a major issue. We present here a platform of development, based on internal models that have been designed to achieve this reusability and standardization for the efficient development of new virtual environments. We defined a new generic model named STORM, used to describe reusable behaviors for 3D objects and reusable interactions between those objects or with humans. We also defined a scenario language named LORA, which allow non-computer scientists author various and complex sequences of tasks in a virtual scene. Based on those models, as an industrial validation with Nexter-Group, we have created 20 operational scenarios of maintenance virtual training on military equipments. We are also begining to create collaborative environments, where virtual and real humans have to collaborate to achieve their procedures.

Todays’ product development process is characterized by an increasing use of embedded software solutions integrated into mechatronic products. The development is more and more translocated into a virtual environment. New software methods and tools have to be developed. Industry 4.0 is an approach to highlight the tendency of modern development. Communication between smart products, communication via internet technologies, cyber-physical systems and the Internet of Things are the basis of Industry 4.0. Owing this development, used project management methodologies have to be adjusted. In special the well-known V-Model is now extended to the W-Model to cope with the new requirements like communications between different disciplines. New approaches in virtual development have to be adapted to modern teaching techniques. Therefore a course for first semester mechanical engineering students is conducted by the department of Computer Integrated Design at the Technische Universität Darmstadt. Industry 4.0 fundamentals are taught as well as the development process underlying the so called W-Model. The students will apply this knowledge while they participate in exercises. A web-based tutorial is provided every week with different learning packages. With these learning packages, the students learn to use the project management techniques as well as software development techniques to solve different tasks. Later complex data structures and algorithms can be coded and are applied. The software development techniques, established in development of information technologies, gets more important in mechanical engineering. Therefore the students learn these aspects. Over three months length the students work in groups and use all their skills to realize a bigger software-project — a digital factory. They use a virtual testing environment (ViTMeS 3.0) to develop their solution. The presented ViTMeS 3.0 is a further development of a virtual testing environment used in last year’s team work. Later they can test their code with a real life example. This example, the digital factory, built with LEGO Mindstorms, is an important part of teaching students the foundations of communication and information techniques as well as software development and programming skills. The last step of the team work is the coding of a graphical user interface for appropriate visualization.

At present common problems in interior design involve in many aspects such as customer's satisfaction not met, understanding mismatch between designers and customers since they are not on the same page. Therefore, we aim to develop a VR application for interior decoration in order to let customers decorate a virtual room according to their preferences and be able to share the image of their design to the designer and evaluate usability of the application. The principle of the application is to simulate the Virtual Reality (VR) via Oculus Rift CV1 cooperating a Leap Motion controller, a hand movement and gesture detection device which help users easily design, arrange, and move 3D objects (furniture) in the virtual environment. There are three main functionalities of the application. First, creating a floor plan to define an interior design area. Second, placing the furniture on the scene, which they cannot be overlapped. Third, user movement can be done by the virtual joystick controlled by hand movement. When the design is not complete, the user can save his/her work in XML format in order to work on the design later. Once the design is finished, the user can capture a bird's eye view of the work for better understanding between designers and customers. The performance evaluation of the application can be categorized into two groups: 1) Quantitative method: by assigning tasks to the tester users in order to evaluate the application in learnability aspect. 2) Qualitative method: using Bipolar Laddering (BLA), a participatory subjective exploration method on user experience, to find strengths and weaknesses of the application. The result of the evaluation shows that the average score of learnability is 4.58 out of 5.0 which means that the users would be able to create a floor plan and place furniture as they wish easily on the scene. The application gives the users more realistic view, and the design output can be used in the real world.

Problems in managing information security for access to remote laboratories in higher education institutions are persistent worldwide. The objective of this research is to define alternatives to mitigate risks, vulnerabilities and threats in a remote laboratory for the management of information of students, teachers and administrators in a higher education institution. The deductive method and exploratory research were used with the application of seven phases defined by the authors. It resulted a simulation of the evaluation of the information security of a remote laboratory, an Architecture of a remote laboratory integrating virtual learning environments and a Model for the integration of information security in remote laboratories. It was concluded that information security analysis to mitigate risks, vulnerabilities and threats in a remote laboratory of a higher education institution is crucial to guarantee data protection, experiment management and integrity, confidentiality and availability (CIA). for information management of students, teachers and administrators; considering the optimization of administrative processes and the legal basis.

We have developed an intelligent tutoring system coupled with a virtual laboratory, which constitute a semi-open learning environment. This environment provides the student with the opportunity to learn through exploration within a virtual laboratory, while achieving the expected learning objectives. The key element of this environment is a novel representation for the student model based on probabilistic relational models. This student model has several advantages: flexibility, user adaptability, high modularity and facilities for model construction for different scenarios. The model keeps track of the students' knowledge at different levels of granularity, combining the performance and exploration behavior in several experiments, to decide the best way to guide the student in following experiments, and to re-categorize the students based on the results. We have implemented a tutor for a virtual robotics laboratory, and evaluated the system with an initial group of 20 students. The results show that students who explore the virtual environment with the help of the tutor have a better academic skills, and also that the predictions of the student model are generally accurate.