TY - JOUR
T1 - Teaching an aerospace engineering design course via virtual worlds
T2 - A comparative assessment of learning outcomes
AU - Okutsu, Masataka
AU - Delaurentis, Daniel
AU - Brophy, Sean
AU - Lambert, Jason
N1 - Funding Information:
This project was sponsored by the Discovery Learning Research Center at Purdue University; we are indebted to Gabriela Weaver, Beverly Sypher, and Willie Burgess for their support and guidance. Additional funding was provided by Purdue University College of Engineering (Purdue Engineers of 2020 grant); we thank James Jones, Peter Meckl, and Michael Harris for their support and guidance. Special thanks go to Micah Bojrab, Eric Johnson, Avin Pattath, Yuyan Song, and Mili Vishwakarma who made invaluable contributions in the development of Aeroquest. We are grateful to Hadi Ali, David Ebert, Kathleen Howell, Lorraine Kisselburgh, Tatsuya Kotegawa, Frank Laipert, Jason Liu, James Longuski, Carlos Morales, Tom Pavlak, Prashant Rajan, and Yogesh Velankar for their assistance in various aspects of this project. Margaret S. Morris has provided helpful editorial assistance. Finally, we extend our sincere gratitude to the students in AAE 251 in the Fall-2009 semester for their participation, patience, and valuable feedback. Appendix A
PY - 2013/1
Y1 - 2013/1
N2 - To test the concept of multiuser 3D virtual environments as media to teach semester-long courses, we developed a software prototype called Aeroquest. An aerospace design course - offered to 135 second-year students for university credits in Fall 2009 - was divided into two groups: the real-world group attending lectures, physically, in a campus hall and the virtual-world group attending lectures, remotely, in Aeroquest. To date, numerous studies on the educational use of multiuser virtual environments have been reported in the literature. However, among studies on virtual-world-based courses, our investigation was one of the firsts to employ learning outcomes (rather than affective states) that were objectively measured (rather than subjectively reported) against a control group. We found that the virtual-world group achieved the performance benchmark, defined by the exam score of the real-world group, within a 95% confidence interval, suggesting the virtual worlds' untapped potential as a teaching platform in early engineering courses - especially for distance education.
AB - To test the concept of multiuser 3D virtual environments as media to teach semester-long courses, we developed a software prototype called Aeroquest. An aerospace design course - offered to 135 second-year students for university credits in Fall 2009 - was divided into two groups: the real-world group attending lectures, physically, in a campus hall and the virtual-world group attending lectures, remotely, in Aeroquest. To date, numerous studies on the educational use of multiuser virtual environments have been reported in the literature. However, among studies on virtual-world-based courses, our investigation was one of the firsts to employ learning outcomes (rather than affective states) that were objectively measured (rather than subjectively reported) against a control group. We found that the virtual-world group achieved the performance benchmark, defined by the exam score of the real-world group, within a 95% confidence interval, suggesting the virtual worlds' untapped potential as a teaching platform in early engineering courses - especially for distance education.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.compedu.2012.07.012
DO - 10.1016/j.compedu.2012.07.012
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84866518590
SN - 0360-1315
VL - 60
SP - 288
EP - 298
JO - Computers and Education
JF - Computers and Education
IS - 1
ER -