Development of a mechanical maintenance training simulator in OpenSimulator for F-16 aircraft engines

Mechanical maintenance of F-16 engines is carried out as a team effort involving 3–4 skilled engine technicians, but the details of its procedures and requisites change constantly, to improve safety, optimize resources, and respond to knowledge learned from field outcomes. This provides a challenge for development of training simulators, since simulated actions risk becoming obsolete rapidly and require costly reimplementation. This paper presents the development of a 3D mechanical maintenance training simulator for this context, using a low-cost simulation platform and a software architecture that separates simulation control from simulation visualization, in view of enabling more agile adaptation of simulators. This specific simulator aims to enable technician training to be enhanced with cooperation and context prior to the training phase with actual physical engines. We provide data in support of the feasibility of this approach, describing the requirements that were identified with the Portuguese Air Force, the overall software architecture of the system, the current stage of the prototype, and the outcomes of the first field tests with users

eXtended new reality

This article addresses some aspects of the potential of Extended Reality (XR) technologies in the context of the accelerated ongoing digital transformation, with public awareness and wider acceptance being prompted by current pandemic, due to the widespread adoption of teleworking, distance learning, and virtual conferences. The state-of-the-art of XR technologies and immersive environments is briefly addressed from the perspective of their sustained adoption in multiple scenarios, including education and training, well-being and active aging, and business.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Integrating virtual worlds with learning management systems : the MULTIS approach

Trabalho apresentado em 2016 no 15th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Communications and 2016 8th International Symposium on Cyberspace and Security - IUCC-CSS,Granada, Spain, 2016.Learning Management Systems (LMS) provide minimal support for educational use of virtual worlds. Integration efforts assume the educators are inside the virtual world, providing hooks to services in the external LMS, to setup and manage virtual world activities. We present the inverse approach, enabling educators to setup and manage virtual world activities using the traditional LMS Web interface as an integral part of the overall educational activities of a course. In our approach, the LMS enables the teacher/trainer to setup, control, track, and store virtual world activities and its elements. It is the result of a joint effort by academic and corporate teams, implemented in the Formare LMS for OpenSimulator and Second Life Grid virtual world platforms. We explain how the Multis architecture can be used for integration, with concrete cases, an approach that can be implemented in other LMS and virtual world platforms, to overcome the limitations of existing systems for organizational management of e-learning activities.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Integration scenarios of virtual worlds in learning management systems using the MULTIS approach

This work further clarifies how the MULTIS architecture can be used for integration of virtual worlds in learning management system (LMS) for organizational management of e-learning activities, as an extension to a previous work published in the proceedings of VEAI 2016. Current LMSs provide minimal support for educational use in an organizational context, and other integration efforts assume that educators are inside the virtual world, accessing the LMS as an external service. Our approach enables educators to set up and manage virtual world activities from within the traditional LMS Web interface as an integral part of the overall educational activities of a course. The MULTIS architecture foresees several alternative communication channels between LMS and virtual worlds, including the spooling of automated clients or “bots” and the flexibility to inject code if necessary and possible. In this work, we detail the application of this architecture and its approach in several sample scenarios, based on previous analysis of integration requirements. It is the result of a joint effort by academic and corporate teams, implemented and tested in the Formare LMS for OpenSimulator and Second Life Grid virtual world platforms.Partly funded by Altice Labs (MULTIS II project) and by Project "TEC4Growth - Pervasive Intelligence, Enhancers and Proofs of Concept with Industrial Impact/NORTE-01-0145-FEDER- 000020", in the North Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, and through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Immersive learning environments

Os ambientes de aprendizagem imersivos são espaços onde se coocorrem dois fenómenos complexos: a aprendizagem e a imersão, levantando dificuldades de interpretação e, consequentemente, da liberdade de decisão dos participantes para sua orquestração pedagógica ou de aprendizagem. Neste trabalho apresenta-se uma conceptualização teórica que combina estes fenómenos, com o objetivo de contribuir para a resolução deste problema. Demonstra-se através de cinco casos como esta conceptualização permite novas formas de interpretar e analisar a aprendizagem, para dessa forma concretizar o potencial de impacte sobre a orquestração pedagógica e a regulação da aprendizagem.Immersive learning environments are spaces where two complex phenomena co-occur: learning and immersion. This raises interpretation difficulties, and consequently difficulties for free decision-making of participants, towards their learning or pedagogic orchestration. This works presents a theoretical construct that combines these phenomena, with the aim of contributing to solve this problem. It demonstrates, using five cases, how this construct enables new ways to interpret and analyze learning, and thus render concrete its impact potential on pedagogical orchestration and learning regulationinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Research on educational media and resources in the field of French vocational education. The case of automobile maintenance

In France, vocational educational has a long history. It was institutionalised by the Ministry of Education in the 19th century, separate from private enterprise. Since the 1980s, a new process of convergence between general and vocational education has been engaged in order to propose an initial training and a general education to vocational students and apprentices. To this end, vocational teachers are strongly invited to use professional resources, such as those used in the commercial sector, as references.Our paper investigates the issue of resource usage by teachers in a specific field: automobile maintenance. This field is particularly interesting because, in recent decades, the knowledge and competencies to be transmitted have widely evolved. After a thorough literature review, we found only a few scientific references about research on these issues, which have mainly been undertaken by ergonomists, sociologists and didacticians in this domain. However, many resources have been developed, in particular on the Internet, and these constitute an interesting field to investigate. So the situation might be changin

Teaching Sciences in Virtual Worlds with Mastery Learning: A Case of Study in Elementary School

Virtual worlds are 3D environments that provide a feeling of immersion and a high degree of interaction, collaboration, communication between users. Its applicability can be focused on the educational scope, in which theories can be integrated as the basis to didactic activities carried out in the 3D environment, being its area of interdisciplinary comprehension. In this context, this article presents the use of a Virtual World built to assist in the teaching of Science for students of the middle school, whose articulation of the activities performed in the course are based on the precepts of the educational theory Mastery Learning. Tests were carried out in the subject of science, being divided into two periods with different groups for comparative purposes and realized evaluations during the period of the experiments. Kruskal-Wallis and Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney non-parametric test were applied to the results of the assessments to ascertain the performance of each group. It was verified in the general analyzis that the participants who used the Virtual World had a growing performance, with high medians and adequate distribution of the results, being predominant of a smaller variability and amplitude. Thus, was possible to conclude that the results obtained with the approach were positive, which led to the validation of this research and presented a clear contribution to the academic environment

Measuring the effectiveness of virtual training : a systematic review

The amount of research on virtual reality learning tools increases with time. Despite the diverse environments and theoretical foundations, enough data have been accumulated in recent years to provide a systematic review of the methods used. We pose ten questions concerning the methodological aspects of these studies. We performed a search in three databases according to the PRISMA guidelines and evaluated several characteristics, with particular emphasis on researchers' methodological decisions. We found an increase over time in the number of studies on the effectiveness of VR-based learning. We also identified shortcomings related to how the duration and number of training sessions are reported. We believe that these two factors could affect the effectiveness of VR-based training. Furthermore, when using the Kirkpatrick model, a significant imbalance can be observed in favor of outcomes from the ‘Reaction’ and ‘Learning’ levels compared to the ‘Behavior’ and ‘Results’ levels. The last of these was not used in any of the 330 reviewed studies. These results highlight the importance of research on the effectiveness of VR training. Taking into account the identified methodological shortcomings will allow for more significant research on this topic in the future