Katharina Schuster

Preparing for Industry 4.0 – Collaborative Virtual Learning Environments in Engineering Education

In consideration of future employment domains, engineering students should be prepared to meet the demands of society 4.0 and industry 4.0 – resulting from a fourth industrial revolution. Based on the technological concept of cyber-physical systems and the internet of things, it facilitates – among others - the vision of the smart factory. The vision of “industry 4.0” is characterized by highly individualized and at the same time cross-linked production processes. Physical reality and virtuality increasingly melt together and international teams collaborate across the globe within immersive virtual environments. In the context of the development from purely document based management systems to complex virtual learning environments (VLEs), a shift towards more interactive and collaborative components within higher educational e-learning can be noticed, but is still far from being called the state of the art. As a result, engineering education is faced with a large potential field of research, which ranges from the technical development and didactical conception of new VLEs to the investigation of students’ acceptance or the proof of concept of the VLEs in terms of learning efficiency. This paper presents two corresponding qualitative studies: In a series of focus groups, it was investigated which kinds of VLEs students prefer in a higher education context. Building upon the results of the focus groups, a collaborative VLE was created within the open world game Minecraft. First screenings of the video material of the study indicate a connection between communicational behavior and successful collaborative problem solving in virtual environments.

Diving in? How Users Experience Virtual Environments Using the Virtual Theatre

Simulations are used in various fields of education. One approach of improving learning with simulations is the development of natural user interfaces, e.g. driving or flight simulators. The Virtual Theatre enables unrestricted movement through a virtual environment by a Head Mounted Display and an omnidirectional floor. In the experimental study presented (n = 38), the effects of objective hardware characteristics were being tested in two groups. The task was the same: Remembering positions of objects after spotting them in a maze. One group fulfilled the task in the Virtual Theatre, the other group on a laptop. Personal characteristics (gaming experience, locus of control) and perception measures for immersion (spatial presence, flow) were also assessed. Analyses show that the Virtual Theatre indeed leads to more spatial presence and flow, but has a negative effect on the task performance. This contradicts the common assumption that immersion leads to better learning.

Next-Generation Teaching and Learning Using the Virtual Theatre

When graduates enter the working world, they have to apply their knowledge gained during their studies to new situations. Virtual Reality bears a great potential to simulate difficult situations, e. g. in dangerous environments. However, a major drawback of many Virtual Reality environments is the lack of natural navigation and free locomotion within the artificially designed world. Compared to a driving simulator, where users are sitting in a mock-up holding an actual wheel, users need to be able to move around freely if such situations are being simulated. Mixed Reality Simulators like the “Virtual Theatre” combine various technical devices. A head mounted display enables a three dimensional visualization of the simulation. The Virtual Theatre defines its unique characteristics through the omnidirectional treadmill. This omnidirectional floor consists of rollers, which are embedded centric to the middle point. Through this floor, the user is able to perform natural movements. By making use of a data glove, the user can actively take part in the events of his virtual experience based on hand movements. In the present work, an application of the Virtual Theatre is demonstrated based on a use-case, in which a plateau on “Mars” was implemented in terms of learning and exploring scenarios. The user is able to explore the Mars surface containing “Mars Rover” vehicles, orbiters and satellites. In the second major scenario, the user can maneuver a Mars rover through an obstacle course. In further development steps, the Virtual Theatre will be utilized for teaching purposes and to realize applications in terms of remote laboratories. Based on this, it is either possible to visit elusive points of interests like a nuclear power plant or to use experimental setups that are located at other universities remotely. These applications allow a holistic usage of innovative teaching approaches.

Dipl-Ing Rest in Peace? The Implementation of the Bologna Process in Germany’s Engineering Education

More than ten years after the signing of the Bologna Declaration, the European Higher Education Area has been launched on March 12 2010. Many of the original objectives have made a lot of progress, such as increasing the mobil- ity amongst students in Europe in order to foster intercultural competencies and preparing the graduates for a global job market. In engineering though, the number of students who study abroad is still pretty low. Other aspects like comparable de- grees or courses still need further development throughout all fields of study. After a short presentation about the background of the Bologna Process, the following article describes the implementation in Germanys engineering education so far. It also presents different opinions of various stakeholders. Further research questions are beingdiscussed at the end of the paper.The role of the studentsis paid specialat- tention to throughoutthe whole text. The article is based on qualitative documentary research.

Spannungsfelder der Innovationsfähigkeit. Internationales Monitoring im BMBF-Forschungs- und Entwicklungsprogramm A-L-K

Das vom Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung sowie vom Europaischen Sozialfonds geforderte Forschungs- und Entwicklungsprogramm „Arbeiten – Lernen – Kompetenzen entwickeln. Innovationsfahigkeit in einer modernen Arbeitswelt“ zielt auf die Starkung der Innovationsfahigkeit in Deutschland. Der Beitrag erlautert die Funktionen des programmbegleitenden internationalen Monitorings (IMO) und stellt zentrale Ergebnisse der bisherigen Monitoringaktivitaten vor. Dabei liegt der Fokus auf der Beschreibung von funf elementaren Dilemmata des wirtschaftlichen Handelns in der modernen Arbeitswelt sowie deren Implikationen fur den Bereich des praventiven Arbeits- und Gesundheitsschutzes.

Investigating mixed-reality teaching and learning environments for future demands : the trainers’ perspective

The first three industrial revolutions were characterized by the invention of water and steam engine, centralized electric power infrastructure and mass production as well as digital computing and communications technology. The current developments caused by the fourth revolution, also known as “Industry 4.0”, pose major challenges to almost every kind of work, workplace, and the employees. Due to the concepts of cyber-physical systems, Internet of Things and the increasing globalization, remote work is a fast-growing trend in the workplace, and educational strategies within virtual worlds become more important. Especially methods as teaching and learning within virtual worlds are expected to have an enormous impact on advanced education in the future. However, it is not trivial to transfer a reliable educational method from real to the virtual worlds. Therefore, it is important to adapt, check and change even small didactic elements to guarantee a sustainable learning success. As there is a lot of ongoing research about using virtual worlds for the training of hazardous situations, it has to be figured out which potential those environments bear for the everyday education of academic staff and which competencies and educational support trainers need to have respectively can give in those worlds. The used approach for this study was to investigate the trainers’ didactic perspective on mixed-reality teaching and learning. A total of ten trainers from different areas in Germany took part in this study. Every participant pursued both roles: the teaching and the learning part in a virtual learning environment. In order to assess the learning success and important key factors the experiment yields data from the participants’ behavior, their answers to a semi-structured interview and video analysis, recorded from the virtual world. Resulting data were analyzed by using different qualitative as well as quantitative methods. The findings of this explorative research suggest the potential for learning in virtual worlds and give inside into influencing variables. The online gaming experience and the age of participants can be shown to be related to participants’ performance in the virtual world. It looks like the barriers for the affected trainers are low regarding utilization of virtual worlds. Together with the mentioned advantages and possible usages, the potential of these setups is shown.

OpenBologna: a strategic instrument for integrating students in curriculum development

In 2010, the Mercator Foundation and VolkswagenStiftungs initiative Bologna – the Future of Teaching introduced funding for degree programmes and competence centres for a variety of issues in Germany, following the example of UK Subject Centres. In order to tackle the challenges in engineering sciences brought about by the Bologna Process, three large German technical universities (RWTH Aachen University, Ruhr-University Bochum and Technical University Dortmund) launched the Competence and Service Centre for Teaching and Learning in Engineering Sciences (known as TeachING-LearnING.EU). Here, students are involved in the improvement of teaching and learning using the strategic instrument of OpenBologna. It is based on the concept of Open Innovation, developed and used by companies in the business sector to actively integrate customers into new product developments. This paper illustrates the OpenBologna strategy and its potential benefits for curriculum development. The general aims of the Competence and Service Center TeachING-LearnING.EU and the strategic instrument OpenBologna are presented. A short introduction to Open Innovation describes the foundation on which the new strategy for curriculum development is based. This is followed by some general thoughts about the transfer of Open Innovation to the educational sector and a description of the operational level of OpenBologna. In order to give the reader an impression of the outcome of OpenBologna, the results of the first ideas contest are presented and reflected on in terms of their benefits to curriculum development. The paper concludes with upcoming measures and corresponding research questions.

Status Quo of Media Usage and Mobile Learning in Engineering Education

The usage of different kinds of media is part and parcel of teaching and learning processes in higher education. According to today’s possibilities of information and communication technologies, mobile devices and app-usage have become indispensable for a big share of the population in everyday life. However, there is little empirical evidence on how students use mobile devices for learning processes in higher education, especially in engineering education. Within the project “Excellent Teaching and Learning in Engineering Sciences (ELLI)”, three large technical universities (RWTH Aachen University, Ruhr-University Bochum, Technical University Dortmund) follow different approaches in order to improve the current teaching and learning situation in engineering education. Many of the corresponding measures are media-related. In this context, a broad understanding of media is applied which includes hardware as well as software. Amongst others, research is conducted on the topics of mobile learning, virtual laboratories, virtual collaboration, social media services and e-learning recommendation systems for teaching staff. In order to match the literature and results of the project with the current habits of study related media usage of students, the three universities conducted a survey in cooperation with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). The KIT’s questionnaire covers more than 50 education-related media and IT-Services and has been applied at over 20 universities in 6 countries. For the survey conducted within the ELLI project, the topic of mobile learning was added to the questionnaire. Over 1.500 students were asked about their habits of study related media usage in terms of frequency of use and level of satisfaction. Regarding the topic of mobile learning, the students were asked for the kind of hardware and the kind of apps they use for higher education purposes. The 130 identified apps were clustered regarding subject and function. This paper presents the main results concerning the students’ general habits of study related media usage and their mobile learning habits. It concludes with a special focus on the possibilities mobile devices offer to the improvement of engineering education.

Please Vote now! Evaluation of Audience Response Systems : First Results From a Flipped Classroom Setting

Many University lecturers in Germany face the challenge of teaching very large classes, sometimes including 1000 or even more students. They often have to cope with a very high level of noise, bad room conditions, an extremely low level of participation as well as interaction and feedback. Some lecturers therefore try to overcome these challenges by using technology in their classroom. Previous research has already focused on evaluating the use of audience response systems (ARS) in a traditional but very large engineering lecture. This sort of technology has proven to be an effective tool in order to e. g. increase student motivation, give them additional support in the learning process and on the other hand give the lecturer feedback about the students’ learning progress as well as possible crucial points of the lecture. This paper, however, goes one step further. It analyzes the use of ARS in a flipped classroom setting of a large engineering lecture for first-year-students. After having completed almost two thirds of the flipped classroom lecture, students were being questioned about their experiences and opinions about the use of ARS in this particular educational setting. The standardized questionnaire included questions issuing e. g. comprehension, motivation, frequency, enjoyment, interaction, involvement as well as usability aspects. First results show that e. g. the majority of the students feel that clicker questions foster their comprehension, motivate them to be attentive and increase the quality of the lecture. When comparing the results to findings from previous research in a traditional lecture, however, one thing becomes apparent: The evaluation of the use of ARS in the in a flipped classroom setting has turned out to be slightly less positive than that of the traditional lecture. This finding will be particularly discussed and may even call for further research in the designated field of interest. In a first step, the lecture itself will be described considering content, background and general settings. Subsequently, the survey instrument and methodology will be presented. In a third step, the results of the survey will be presented and discussed. Finally, further research fields will be identified.

Enhancing the Learning Success of Engineering Students by Virtual Experiments

In a world that is characterized by highly specialized industry sectors, the demand for well-educated engineers increases significantly. Thus, the education of engineering students has become a major field of interest for universities. However, not every university is able to provide the required number of industry demonstrators to impart the needed practical knowledge to students. Our aim is to fill this gap by establishing Remote Labs. These laboratory experiments are performed in Virtual Reality environments which represent real laboratories accessible from different places. Following the implementation of such Remote Labs described within our past publications the aim of this contribution is to examine and evaluate possibilities of controlling Remote Labs from arbitrary locations. These control mechanisms are based on the virtualization of two concurrently working six-axis robots in combination with a game pad remote controller. The evaluation of the virtual demonstrator is carried out in terms of a study that is based on practical tests and questionnaires to the measure learning success.