Volume 12, Number 3

Virtual Collaboration in the Context of Teaching and Learning With Interdisciplinary Perspective

  Authors

Jiangfan Feng , Yanjie Gong, and Mao Tian, Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China

  Introduction

Online virtual environments where students can learn and interact somewhat realistically have great potential for engineering studies, such as course resources, tools, and software that support learning and educational practice. Here, we present a collaborative virtual environment for interactive learning and immersive visualization with an interdisciplinary perspective. It allows users to visualize and sample complex scenarios' structures and dynamics and interact with other users in the same virtual environment. A series of controlled studies have been made in which participants were tasked with various emergency decision goals. Moreover, it can also support the following integrated functions: 3-D spatial analysis, 3-D visualization for spatial process, and 3-D spatial decision-making. The performance evaluation results confirmed the proposed virtual environment's higher usability and user satisfaction. This approach will be able to express opportunities for extending interdisciplinary knowledge in engineering education and support the students in their creativity and collaboration skills.

  Keywords

Engineering Education, Virtual Collaboration, Interdisciplinary, Virtual Learning