Assessment of the pilot implementation of a game-based gear design laboratory

Taking advantage of game technology for offering truly immersive and interactive learning experiences to undergraduate engineering and science students has now become a real possibility. An immersive interactive virtual laboratory environment has been created for the laboratory component of a junior-level undergraduate mechanical engineering course on mechanisms and machine dynamics. For instance, a laboratory system implemented using a multi-player computer game engine provides the students with the flexibility to perform various experiments related to the concepts of the fundamental law of gearing and to the planetary motion of gears. Assessment tools such as pre- and post-experiment tests are an integral part of this game-based laboratory environment and form the basis for providing different levels of support to the students at every step of the laboratory exercise. Furthermore, the game environment can be equipped with functionality for monitoring the students´ progress and learning outcomes, thus enabling skill-based assessment. This paper will report on the learning assessment conducted as part of a pilot implementation of this gear design laboratory. The evaluation metrics for the virtual laboratory environment as well as the collected data on learning effectiveness will be presented and the general student feedback will be discussed.