Augmented Reality Instruction for Hands-on Manufacturing Skills

Principal Investigator
Dr. John Liu, Mechanical Engineering; Prof. John Hard, Mechanical Engineering
Fund: d'Arbeloff Fund
Funding Period: AY2021
Department/Lab/Center: Mechanical Engineering

Due to challenges associated with instructing many students using limited instructors, skills training often settles on the two extremes of in-person instruction, which is personal but resource-intensive, and traditional paper or multimedia, which is efficient but not interactive and disconnected from the student’s physical context. We propose to develop interactive, augmented reality (AR) instruction for hands-on skills to produce a “blended machine shop” for two key MechE undergraduate classes: 2.670 (Mechanical Engineering Tools) and 2.008 (Design and Manufacturing II). The instructional design will innovate on skills training by fusing pedagogical insights from the blended classroom and industry best practices in AR use for worker productivity. Pre- and post-tests will assess learning gains. AR-enhanced instruction has potential to deepen learning retention and knowledge transfer in manufacturing skills, and further optimize how instructors and students spend time in the machine shop.