Engineering laboratory courses have a significant role in building practical knowledge and enhancing the skills of the students. While working in electronics laboratories, students often operate complicated laboratory equipment and juggle through a set of multiple knobs and buttons to configure the equipment(s). It takes a lot of practice to master the skill of operating the laboratory equipment and it becomes difficult for students to operate the equipment without any prior experience. Virtual reality (VR) is the emerging technology and has the potential to provide a better learning experience to the students. In this paper, a VR‐based learning environment (VLE) is developed, which aims to give prior training to the engineering students about the electronics laboratory hardware. An experimental study was conducted to measure the effectiveness of VR on student knowledge development, learning motivation, and cognition. The study was conducted among the 65 engineering students and they were randomly divided into two groups: treatment group (N = 33) and control group (N = 32). The students of the treatment group were taught with the VR approach and students of the control group were taught with a conventional teaching approach. The outcomes of the experiment indicate that VR has a significant positive impact on student knowledge, learning motivation, and cognition. By interacting with the three‐dimensional virtual models of the laboratory instruments, students were able to demonstrate an improved understanding of the laboratory hardware. Also, the treatment group students mentioned that they were not worried about the equipment malfunction that has further enhanced their confidence and reduced the cognitive load.

中文翻译：

---

虚拟现实学习环境可增强电子工程实验室的经验

工程实验室课程在建立实践知识和提高学生技能方面具有重要作用。在电子实验室工作时，学生经常操作复杂的实验室设备，并通过一组多个旋钮和按钮来配置设备。掌握操作实验室设备的技能需要大量练习，而没有任何先验经验的学生就很难操作设备。虚拟现实（VR）是新兴技术，具有为学生提供更好学习体验的潜力。在本文中，开发了一个基于VR的学习环境（VLE），旨在为工程专业的学生提供有关电子实验室硬件的事先培训。进行了一项实验研究，以衡量VR在学生知识发展，学习动机和认知方面的有效性。这项研究是在65名工科学生中进行的，他们被随机分为两组：治疗组（N  = 33）和对照组（N  = 32）。治疗组的学生采用VR方法进行教学，对照组的学生采用常规教学方法进行教学。实验结果表明，虚拟现实对学生的知识，学习动机和认知有显着的积极影响。通过与实验室仪器的三维虚拟模型进行交互，学生能够展示出对实验室硬件的更好理解。此外，治疗小组的学生提到他们并不担心设备故障会进一步增强他们的信心并减轻认知负担。