Virtual Environments in Materials Science and Engineering: The Students' Opinion

Introduction

The use of virtual resources in university teaching is becoming a key issue (Mumtaz, 2000), especially in engineering degrees (Thornton, Nola, García, Asta, & Olson, 2009; Balamuralithara & Woods, 2009). Hence in the past years, many scientific contributions were published on novel virtual environments which some teachers are applying in subjects linked with Materials Science and Engineering (Bhargava, Antonakakis, Cunningham, & Zehnder, 2006; Dobrzański, Jagiełło, & Honysz, 2008; Dobrzański & Honysz, 2009; 2010; Dimiduk, 2011; Sinnott, 2013; Brophy, Magana, & Strachan, 2013; Vergara, Rubio, & Lorenzo, 2014a; 2014b). The general assessment of these experiences has been always positive for both teachers and students. Even so, it must be taken into account that the use of virtual tools in the classroom must be framed within an appropriate methodological framework so that the educative objectives could be correctly obtained (Vergara & Rubio, 2012). Therefore, what is really important is not the use itself of teaching technologies, but how they are designed and applied by the teacher in the classroom in order to exploit their maximum teaching potential (Dillenbourg, 2000; Thornton et al., 2009).

Regarding subjects linked with Materials Science and Engineering, the development of practical classes in a real laboratory environment entails potential shortcomings. When the groups are excessively crowded, some students may not be able to see how a materials testing machine works while teacher is explaining. Even when the size of the class is appropriate, certain details of the machine performance are not well appreciated due to

• 1.

  Quick execution of the action developed by the testing machine or due to

• 2.

  The small zone where the test data is shown.

Finally, another shortcoming of performing the practical classes with students is the timetable schedule availability of both the laboratory testing machines and the laboratory itself. However, among the main advantages of the virtual resources, the following can be found:

• 1.

  To visualize the performance of the testing machine on a computer screen,

• 2.

  To enlarge a certain zone on the computer screen,

• 3.

  To show the test at a lower speed, and

• 4.

  To offer access to the virtual tools in the students’ computer, allowing their use when needed.

In this chapter, an analysis is presented of the engineering students’ opinion with regard to the use of diverse virtual resources (VR) in subjects of the Materials Science and Engineering area. Specifically, the resources analysed in this work was recently presented in several teaching innovation forums:

• 1.

  Interactive Virtual Platforms or IVP (Vergara et al., 2014b),

• 2.

  Interactive Multimedia Applications or IMA (Rubio, González, Heres, Ruiz, & Pérez, 2006),

• 3.

  Didactic Video or DV of short length (5-10 minutes) which are edited by some television channels or private companies.