FactoryVR: Teaching Operations Management with Virtual Reality
We develop, use, and test a new concept for discovery-based learning with Virtual Reality (VR) in operations management courses. Together with selected industry partners, we create VR environments of parts of their real factories. We use this rich material to teach students fundamental operations management concepts. FactoryVR (2020-2022) is a further development of CaseVR (2018-2020).
The project
How can we effectively teach factory management to higher education business and engineering students (undergraduate and graduate)? Most of these students have seen none or just a few factories from the inside. To provide students with a frame of reference, organizing field trips is a common teaching approach in many disciplines. While we organize field trips to factories in our courses, they have many drawbacks: administrational burden, resource constraints, field access, time use, costs, logistics, and participant availability. We wanted to keep and proliferate the immersive learning experience of exploring a real factory environment but, at the same time, remove the limitations of field visits. If we cannot get the students to the factory, could we get the factory to the students?
Due to recent developments in VR technologies, we found that VR offered excellent opportunities to do so and developed FactoryVR. FactoryVR allows the students to virtually visit multiple production sites in different locations and compare their differences without needing to travel. Students can use technologies they already possess (smartphones), the factory apps are offered free of charge, and VR headsets can be bought cheaply.
Implementation into teaching practice
We integrate VR technology into a course assignment. To solve the assignment, students visited virtual factory environments, which supplemented other material available online and in-class lectures. VR is an artificial environment that is presented to the user in such a way that the user experiences it as a close-to-real environment. The virtual factory environments comprise our own VR app developed together with tool manufacturer Hilti.
Students use the app with their own smartphones and simple VR viewers (supplied by us) to immerse into and explore different, real factory environments without having to visit physically. The VR apps encompass combinations of 360-degree videos, photos, and blended information in the form of audio, text, symbols, and drawings. In the VR app that we develop ourselves, we also integrate quizzes as performance self-assessments. This introduces gamification to the VR experience.
Lessons learned and further impacts
The project goals were over-achieved. The apps were developed as planned in cooperation with Hilti and used in the courses. To our knowledge, this is the first time VR has been integrated on a large scale into a business course in higher education—anywhere.
To evaluate the learning experience and learning outcome of FactoryVR, we administered an anonymous survey among the students after the assignment (N=115). We used this together with VR app data and assignment scores to statistically show that students who engaged more with the VR app, had a better learning experience and assignment score. On average, the 43 groups spent 8 hours each interacting with the VR app during the assignment (3-4 people per group). The students reported high satisfaction with the VR app. All results are reported in the paper Netland, T.; Lorenz, R.; Kwasnitschka, D. and Senoner, J. (2021) An VR app to teach operations management, the 28th EurOMA Conference, Online.
This project has won several teaching awards, including the 2020 Reimagine Education Bronze Award in Virtual/Augmented Reality (the “Oscars of Education”), the Nigel Slack Teaching Innovation Award at EurOMA 2021, and the ETH KITE award runner-up 2022. The Reimagine Education jury commented on FactoryVR as follows: “This project has achieved a world-class standard in educational innovation, having been chosen as one of the leading applications from a cohort of 1500. The awarded application achieved outstanding levels of scalability, innovation, and efficacy.” FactoryVR has also been presented at several international conferences, including POMS, EurOMA, ELEC, DSI Conference, APMS, IEOM, AIM Conference, Reimagine Education Conference, Shingo Board, ETH Refresh Teaching Lunch, SWITCH, ETH Teaching Innovation Fair, and ETH Norway Alumni Meeting.
Compared to other VR applications used in teaching (e.g., using HTC Vive or Oculus Rift), FactoryVR has high accessibility and scalability. After app development, the cost per student is in the range of 1 -40 USD, depending on the type and reuse of VR viewers. A practical feature of FactoryVR is that we can also integrate students who would otherwise not participate in factory visits due to other commitments or budget constraints. It can be scaled across borders and lifts constraints of travel time and budget.