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

该项目正在创建一组虚拟现实实验，让 K-12 学生和大学生以及公众接触用于材料研究的实验室设备。一些实验室设备可能非常昂贵或笨重，并且某些实验非常耗时。 这种虚拟现实方法使世界各地更多的人可以以很少的成本或免费获得技术设备来学习工程和材料科学，包括博物馆的参观者和没有这种设备的学校的学生。这些模块是 3D 且完全互动的，有助于吸引更多学生从事工程职业。研究人员正在研究学生如何使用这些虚拟现实模块进行学习，这将有助于其他人将来为其他学科开发更好的虚拟现实教育工具。在国家科学基金会国际科学与工程办公室的资助下，与巴西一所大学的合作允许根据有助于扩大科学和工程参与的主题翻译和开发这些模块。

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 that 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.