Educating tomorrows engineers: Reinforcing engineering concepts through Virtual Reality (VR) teaching aid

The research focuses on the practicality of applying Virtual Reality (VR) as tool for conveying engineering concepts to first year engineering students. It does this by presenting a VR platform aimed at achieving a simplified methodology for depicting and analyzing facility layout and production process. Current reality shows that Higher Education Institutions (HEI's) are towing the electronic teaching path and more practical concepts are delivered to learners, using digital e-learning simulation tools. Equally, HEI's are adopting dynamic models for virtual interaction with students, globally, via e-classrooms and VR platforms. The article presents the developed teaching tool and validation method for conveying factory layout optimization concepts and production process model, through a partially-immersive VR design platform developed using a 3D design tool and complementary high-level applications. The developed teaching aid has an interactive user interface through which the building framework, sections and prototype schema of the industrial process may be visually analyzed.