In training assembly workers in a factory, there are often barriers such as cost and lost productivity due to shutdown. The use of virtual reality (VR) training has the potential to reduce these costs. This research compares virtual bimanual haptic training versus traditional physical training and the effectiveness for learning transfer. In a mixed experimental design, participants were assigned to either virtual or physical training and trained by assembling a wooden burr puzzle as many times as possible during a twenty minute time period.After training, participants were tested using the physical puzzle and were retested again after two weeks. All participants were trained using brightly colored puzzle pieces. To examine the effect of color, testing involved the assembly of colored physical parts and natural wood colored physical pieces. Spatial ability as measured using a mental rotation test, was shown to correlate with the number of assemblies they were able to complete in the training. While physical training outperformed virtual training, after two weeks the virtually trained participants actually improved their test assembly times. The results suggest that the color of the puzzle pieces helped the virtually trained participants in remembering the assembly process. Disciplines Computer-Aided Engineering and Design | Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces | Other Mechanical EngineeringComments This is a manuscript of an article from IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (2014) Abstract-In training assembly workers in a factory, there are often barriers such as cost and lost productivity due to shutdown. The use of virtual reality (VR) training has the potential to reduce these costs. This research compares virtual bimanual haptic training versus traditional physical training and the effectiveness for learning transfer. In a mixed experimental design, participants were assigned to either virtual or physical training and trained by assembling a wooden burr puzzle as many times as possible during a twenty minute time period. After training, participants were tested using the physical puzzle and were retested again after two weeks. All participants were trained using brightly colored puzzle pieces. To examine the effect of color, testing involved the assembly of colored physical parts and natural wood colored physical pieces. Spatial ability as measured using a mental rotation test, was shown to correlate with the number of assemblies they were able to complete in the training. While physical training outperformed virtual training, after two weeks the virtually trained participants actually improved their test assembly times. The results suggest that the color of the puzzle pieces helped the virtually trained participants in remembering the assembly process.

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Institutions of higher education are being called upon to provide a more robust pathway to a college degree and improve upon the advanced workforce for the needs of the 21 st century. While active collaborative learning environments have been encouraged in higher education to improve student engagement, there is a gap in the literature when it comes to connecting the two research areas of collaborative learning and student intention to persist. This research fills this gap by creating and conducting research to examine a model that measures the factors that significantly influence a student's persistence in a virtual collaborative learning environment. The model examines how collaborative learning, campus connectedness, sense of community, organizational commitment, and turnover intention influence student persistence. The model was tested using a sample of students who participated in a virtual learning community (VLC) and the results suggest that all but one of the factors were found to significantly influence student persistence, with the final factor dependent on the number of hours of system usage. We discuss the implications of the research and the model for team-based theory and organizational practice in education and teamwork.

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