Virtual Engineering Sciences Learning Lab: Giving STEM Education a Second Life

Abstract

Engineering education in the 21st century faces multiple obstacles including limited accessibility of course resources due, in part, to the costs associated with acquiring and maintaining equipment and staffing laboratories. Another continuing challenge is the low level of participation of women and other groups historically underrepresented in STEM disciplines. As a partial remedy for these issues, we established a Virtual Engineering Sciences Learning Lab (VESLL) that provides interactive objects and learning activities, multimedia displays, and instant feedback procedures in a virtual environment to guide students through a series of key quantitative skills and concepts. Developed in the online virtual world Second Life TM , VESLL is an interactive environment that supports STEM education, with potential to help reach women and other underrepresented groups. VESLL exposes students to various quantitative skills and concepts through visualization, collaborative games, and problem solving with realistic learning activities. Initial assessments have demonstrated high student interest in VESLL's potential as a supplementary instructional tool and show that student learning experiences were improved by use of VESLL. Ultimately, the VESLL project contributes to the ongoing body of evidence suggesting that online delivery of course content has remarkable potential when properly deployed by STEM educators.

What are we talking about when we talk about STEM education? A review of literature

“…Imaginative and interactive atmospheres involve students in STEM learning (Tseng et al, 2013;August et al, 2016). Educational context is a key aspect in the development of interest and improvement of STEM skills in students (Blustein et al, 2013).…”

“…In light of the results shown in Table 4, we could argue that the authors prefer to integrate the STEM disciplines from a specific context (63%; n = 12). The preferred integrating context is, therefore, framed within the discipline of Technology, as it appears common to use the creation and handling of virtual contexts to achieve the insertion of the rest of the STEM disciplines (e.g., August et al, 2016;Caglar et al, 2015;Evans et al, 2014;Toth 2016;Won et al, 2015). Other contexts used to start out from real-world situations (e.g., Marle et al, 2014) or engineering (e.g., Tseng et al, 2013).…”

StreamflowVL: A Virtual Fieldwork Laboratory that Supports Traditional Hydraulics Engineering Learning

“…The technological advances and high popularity of computer games have been exploited in educational VLs in order to make the learning process more enjoyable and more connected to the students' interests outside the classroom [27][28][29][30][31][32].…”

Modeling Method for Virtual Digital Component Library

“…In experimental teaching, the simulation software can help students understanding the engineering concepts in a better way [3]. By using virtual platforms, students will achieve more improvement and effective deep-learning experience [4], especially in learning the computer-related courses, such as Digital Logic and Computer Interface.…”