In-person engineering instruction relies on the availability of equipment and space. Cost, safety, and scheduling may pose barriers to conducting in-person labs. Virtual experiments may be used to enhance the student experience by, for example, incorporating pre-labs for in-person experiments and providing access to equipment that cannot be safely used in-person. Virtual learning is used in many fields, but there remain questions as to how it should be employed in engineering, an area largely reliant on in-person lab and classroom setups. Earlier studies reviewed the advantages of virtual labs such as demonstrating hard-to-observe phenomena and allowing unlimited trials. This project attempts to leverage these strengths by developing experiments on three virtual platforms: LabVIEW, MATLAB, and Unity. The first version of the Jet Engine Virtual Laboratory is developed in LabVIEW and implemented in UCF's Measurements 1 course during Summer 2020. Student feedback is sought using a survey that suggests positive reception and informs the creation of a MATLAB version of the Jet Engine Virtual Laboratory which is being implemented in Fall 2020. A Unity version of this experiment is in production. This project is expected to fuel the development of more virtual experiments that enhance engineering education at UCF and beyond.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:honorstheses-1957 |
| Date | 01 January 2020 |
| Creators | Lebanoff, Amy P |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Honors Undergraduate Theses |
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