Collaborative Research: Virtual Laboratory for Engineering and Applied Sciences Education (EASE)

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This project is creating a set of virtual reality experiments that will expose K-12 and college students, as well as the public, to laboratory equipment used in the study of materials. Some laboratory equipment can be quite expensive or cumbersome and certain experiments are time-consuming. This virtual reality approach is making technical equipment accessible at little or no cost to many more people around the world to learn about engineering and materials science, including visitors to museums and students at schools which do not own this equipment. The modules are 3-D and fully interactive to help attract more students to engineering careers. Researchers are studying how students learn from using these virtual reality modules, which will help others develop better virtual reality educational tools for other subjects in the future. Collaboration with a university in Brazil, funded through NSF's Office of International Science and Engineering, is allowing the modules to be translated and developed based on topics that will help broaden participation in science and engineering.