Abstract:

Teaching in new technological areas, and particularly about new domains or subjects like Nanotechnology or Nanomaterials Engineering, currently at the forefront of research, require the exploration of new methodologies that ensure the proper motivation and effectiveness in the transfer of knowledge to students.
Moreover, in Master studies and PhD schools, as designed in the present European Higher Education Area (EHEA), docents face different crucial challenges like dealing with an audience that can be of different ages, educational or multidisciplinary backgrounds.

Our research efforts aim to explore the educational value of virtual simulated experiments and 3D visualization tools in combination to both cooperative and guided learning methodologies, where the students are grouped in pairs and guided step by step across the different stages of each virtual exercise.
According to our findings, and current studies in the literature, virtual docent environments like simulated experiments or 3D visualization tools, could constitute a short-term pedagogic methodology able to improve attention, motivation and transfer of ideas to the students in areas where the knowledge is based on highly specific technological concepts that require a strong level of abstraction at the time that the ability to solve problems dependent on space vision.

In order to clarify and to assess the range of application of our methodology, we applied it on a set of teaching sessions about how to use different 3D software in the classroom for innovation in education. The audience consisted of experienced docents from particular technological areas where the software has potential application. Results were evaluated by means of an individual anonymous survey.

Of relevance is that 77% of the attendees found these tools of relevance for teaching purposes. 80% agreed on the fact that students from technological areas have a problem in the comprehension of concepts related to space, dimensions or volume. Strikingly, after the docent experience, 100% of the audience manifested that this kind of tools could be a close-future solution to improve understanding and retention of spatial concepts. Moreover 80% declared their intention on using the same tools that we taught in their next academic year lectures.

These results are encouraging, first because they certify the interest of our methodology, but secondly because they provide an independent evaluation of our research by educational experts.

References:
[1] Alonso-Tapia, J. Et al. Assessment of learning environment motivational quality from the point of view of secondary and high school learners. Learning and Instruction 16 (2006) 295-309
[2] Coldren, J. Y Hively, J. (2009). Interpersonal Teaching style and student. Impression Formation. College teaching, 57, (2), 93-98.
[3] S. Cuesta-López, L. Romero-Santacreu (2013) Improving comprehension by means of 3d visualization tools and other icts in specialized scientific educational workshops, INTED2013 Proceedings, pp. 6572-6577.
[4] R. Serrano-López, S. Cuesta-López, O. Tapia-Júdez (2013) Open-source tools for a simulated-experiment assembly in engineering learning, ICERI2013 Proceedings, pp. 6898-6903.

Keywords:

TICs, 3D Modeling, Visual learning, Virtual learning, Simulated Virtual Experiments.