Virtual labs in electrical engineering education - The VEMA environment

Abstract

3D worlds provide excellent platforms to achieve performance results when designed for the needs of students, helping them to improve acquisition and allowing greater interaction with contents in a unique way. Virtual Labs are the future of education. Simulations, in which environmental measurements and data analysis can be simulated, are being created to combine real-world environments with information supplied by devices. Virtual Labs (VL) designed for educational purposes in Electrical Engineering provide tasks or problems within a virtual environment or context. Users can explore the environment and examine digital objects as they are designed to support inquiry-based learning and conceptual understanding. Online virtual labs simulate learning environments and are designed to be highly attractive. They can complement the traditional formal learning programs, providing the opportunity for an interaction across a range of learning experiences in 3D. Online learning such as virtual classrooms will become the major part of training education in the future. Virtual lab applications are an engaging and agreeable learning system. Educational virtual labs should not merely focus on the virtual environment; they are useful to help students learn to think creatively and understand the complexities of solving meaningful problems, but the support from the teacher is also important. This study presents a virtual scenario of an instrumentation and measurements laboratory. Students work with representations of electrical circuits focused on learning electrical concepts and circuit analysis, also studying and developing action procedures. The goal is to help them learn to think like engineers. While they are learning about circuit theory, they are also learning to apply the many skills of an engineer such as organizing information for writing technical reports. This work was developed to demonstrate how a desktop Virtual Reality (VR) prototype, "Virtual Electric Manual"VEMA, can be applied to an engineering unit and used to enhance security and resourcefulness in using electrical equipment. Several interactive scenes were developed to illustrate the idea using a measurements and instrumentation laboratory as virtual environment.