Design of a Mixed Reality Application for STEM Distance Education Laboratories

Gattullo, Michele; Laviola, Enricoandrea; Boccaccio, Antonio; Evangelista, Alessandro; Fiorentino, Michele; Manghisi, Vito Modesto; Uva, Antonio Emmanuele

doi:10.3390/computers11040050

Open AccessArticle

Design of a Mixed Reality Application for STEM Distance Education Laboratories

by

Michele Gattullo

^*

,

Enricoandrea Laviola

,

Antonio Boccaccio

,

Alessandro Evangelista

,

Michele Fiorentino

,

Vito Modesto Manghisi

and

Antonio Emmanuele Uva

Department of Mechanics, Mathematics, and Management, Polytechnic Institute of Bari, Via Orabona, 4, 70125 Bari, Italy

^*

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Computers 2022, 11(4), 50; https://doi.org/10.3390/computers11040050

Submission received: 10 February 2022 / Revised: 15 March 2022 / Accepted: 22 March 2022 / Published: 24 March 2022

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Xtended or Mixed Reality (AR+VR) for Education)

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Abstract

In this work, we propose a Mixed Reality (MR) application to support laboratory lectures in STEM distance education. It was designed following a methodology extendable to diverse STEM laboratory lectures. We formulated this methodology considering the main issues found in the literature that limit MR’s use in education. Thus, the main design features of the resulting MR application are students’ and teachers’ involvement, use of not distracting graphics, integration of traditional didactic material, and easy scalability to new learning activities. In this work, we present how we applied the design methodology and used the framework for the case study of an engineering course to support students in understanding drawings of complex machines without being physically in the laboratory. We finally evaluated the usability and cognitive load of the implemented MR application through two user studies, involving, respectively, 48 and 36 students. The results reveal that the usability of our application is “excellent” (mean SUS score 84.7), and it is not influenced by familiarity with Mixed Reality and distance education tools. Furthermore, the cognitive load is medium (mean NASA TLX score below 29) for all four learning tasks that students can accomplish through the MR application.

Keywords: mixed reality; distance education and online learning; augmented and virtual reality; improving classroom teaching; mobile learning

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MDPI and ACS Style

Gattullo, M.; Laviola, E.; Boccaccio, A.; Evangelista, A.; Fiorentino, M.; Manghisi, V.M.; Uva, A.E. Design of a Mixed Reality Application for STEM Distance Education Laboratories. Computers 2022, 11, 50. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers11040050

AMA Style

Gattullo M, Laviola E, Boccaccio A, Evangelista A, Fiorentino M, Manghisi VM, Uva AE. Design of a Mixed Reality Application for STEM Distance Education Laboratories. Computers. 2022; 11(4):50. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers11040050

Chicago/Turabian Style

Gattullo, Michele, Enricoandrea Laviola, Antonio Boccaccio, Alessandro Evangelista, Michele Fiorentino, Vito Modesto Manghisi, and Antonio Emmanuele Uva. 2022. "Design of a Mixed Reality Application for STEM Distance Education Laboratories" Computers 11, no. 4: 50. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers11040050

APA Style

Gattullo, M., Laviola, E., Boccaccio, A., Evangelista, A., Fiorentino, M., Manghisi, V. M., & Uva, A. E. (2022). Design of a Mixed Reality Application for STEM Distance Education Laboratories. Computers, 11(4), 50. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers11040050

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Design of a Mixed Reality Application for STEM Distance Education Laboratories

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