For engineering education, using the VR technologies can provide opportunities for students to move away from conventional 2D drawing design scenarios to those VR interactive environments to understand how all of the design elements will come together from the member level to the system level, which can greatly enhance the learning experience in a more detailed 3D way systematically.

The automotive, manufacturing, and construction industries have been slowly embracing new technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Mix Reality (MR) in mechanical and structural design and manufacture (or construction). Industrial pundits predict VR (or MR) will radically change the ways how engineers design, manufacture mechanical parts, and construct buildings and bridges in the future. However, our courses in engineering curriculum still center on traditional pedagogy in lectures with limited labs that hinder an overall development of student’s holistic structural perception from a member to system level. The goal of this project is to explore and develop a library of VR videos and models related to solid mechanics, structures and mechanical equipment including the virtual labs spanning from both engineering and technology curriculum. This will enable a pedagogy innovation of teaching by moving away from conventional 2D drawing design scenarios to those VR interactive environments to understand how all of the design elements come together systematically. In addition, in order to potentially enable online education, a set of virtual labs for the labs currently conducted in the engineering education courses will be developed to extend more labs in a simulated or real-world platform to further enrich students’ learning. These shall be very beneficial to better prepare students for applied learning and the adoption of new technologies in their future careers.

• Student Learning Support

• Immersive Environment (Virtual Reality)

• Augmented Reality