Investigating the learning performances between sequence‐ and context‐based teaching designs for virtual reality (VR)‐based machine tool operation training

Abstract

Abstract Background Training workers in machine tool operations is indispensable. Because training course at school with real machine tools is costly and dangerous, most researchers have concentrated on developing and adopting virtual reality (VR)‐based applications. However, to improve students’ learning performance levels, teaching design is imperative. Purpose This study hopes to investigate the performance differences between sequence‐ (traditional) and context‐based teaching designs along with a self‐developed VR computer numerical control (VRCNC) training environment. Method Experimental design, sequence‐ and context‐based teaching designs were developed for this study. Forty male senior students were recruited from the department of mechanical engineering at an industrial high school. Then, corresponding pretests, teaching activities and posttests were implemented based on the proposed teaching and experimental designs. Finally, experiment‐, questionnaire‐, and interview‐based performance evaluations were utilized to conduct the final comparison and conclusion. Results Averagely, the context‐based teaching design exhibited superior results for mostly the learning performances. The survey results also revealed that the students obtain more satisfaction and self‐confidence after the context‐based teaching. Conclusions According to the results, the context‐based teaching design has obvious improvement on the performance of machine tool operation training. Three types of evaluation results provides a comprehensive support for the proposed context‐based teaching design along with the VRCNC in machine tool education.