AR/VR EXPERIENCES TO SUPPORT AND ENHANCE PILOT PLANT ACTIVITIES

Monash University Faculty of Engineering, in collaboration with the Monash Pilot Processes Student Team, are creating AR and VR experiences to complement our Membrane Pilot Plant for use in undergraduate education and industry training. We aim combine physical and digital experiences to foster a more autonomous learning environment, preparing students to handle open-ended problems effectively and with greater confidence. The digital experiences are designed to encourage students to apply the CDIO framework, particularly emphasising 'Conceive' and 'Design' stages through virtual problem-solving, before moving on to 'Implement' their new knowledge on the physical pilot plant. The concept can also be applied in reverse, where students undertake physical activities first, followed by implementation of their knowledge in the virtual environment. This paper describes our progress to date in developing and implementing the AR and VR experiences. We present the CDIO approach and standards that have informed our activity development, specifically addressing Standards 5, 7 and 8 to enhance design-implement and integrated experiences, and experiential learning. We discuss two of our digital pilot plant activities in detail: 1) a simple AR activity designed for use on a phone or tablet that is used by all engineering students in their common first year design unit, and by second-year chemical and environmental engineering students in a heat and mass transfer unit, and 2) progress on the development of a more complex VR activity that involves programming a digital twin of the process and will be implemented in a mixed reality headset (HoloLens) to train independent users of the pilot plant. We also present our proposed strategy for assessing the effectiveness of and next steps for this intervention to develop blended lab activities with complementary physical and digital components to provide students with exposure to digital technologies and improve their experience and achievement of learning outcomes associated with the pilot plant lab activities.