The social distancing measure imposed worldwide to combat the outbreak of the novel coronavirus has seen rapid adoption of technologies to support online education. Compared to traditional lecture-based courses, online teaching is particularly more challenging for laboratory courses where hands-on activities are essential to achieve the learning outcomes. To deal with this issue, the study presented in this paper was aimed to: (1) to develop a virtual reality (VR) application to aid a civil engineering laboratory course, and (2) to measure the potential of the VR-aided learning (VRAL) application in civil engineering education by assessing the learners' preferences toward VRAL compared to instructor-aided learning (IAL) and video-aided learning (VAL). Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process, a comparison was conducted with 21 civil engineering students from both undergraduate and graduate levels. The results indicated that VRAL was more preferable than VAL by the participants based on the aspects of “interactivity” (the ability to provide theoretical and practical learning environments to the learners), “cognitive interest” (the ability to drive learners to engage in learning activity), “ease of understanding the content” (the ability to provide a clear lecture interpretation, i.e., easy to understand), and “support for learning” (the ability to help learners to achieve the learning goal). Although VRAL was comparatively less preferable than IAL by the participants overall, it was viewed as better in terms of cognitive interest and “accessibility” (the ability to provide learners with better access to the learning approach in terms of time and location). Complementing previous research, the findings supported the benefits of VR applications to aid civil engineering education.

中文翻译：

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虚拟现实应用辅助土木工程实验室课程：多标准比较研究

世界范围内为抗击新型冠状病毒的爆发而实施的社会疏远措施已迅速采用技术来支持在线教育。与传统的基于讲座的课程相比，在线教学对于实验室课程尤其具有挑战性，因为实践活动对于实现学习成果至关重要。为了解决这个问题，本文提出的研究旨在：(1) 开发虚拟现实 (VR) 应用程序来辅助土木工程实验室课程，以及 (2) 衡量 VR 辅助学习的潜力(VRAL) 在土木工程教育中的应用，通过评估学习者对 VRAL 的偏好与教师辅助学习 (IAL) 和视频辅助学习 (VAL) 相比。使用层次分析过程，对来自本科和研究生水平的 21 名土木工程专业学生进行了比较。结果表明，基于“交互性”（为学习者提供理论和实践学习环境的能力）、“认知兴趣”（驱动学习者参与学习的能力）等方面，参与者认为 VRAL 比 VAL 更可取。活动）、“易于理解内容”（提供清晰的讲座解释的能力，即易于理解）和“支持学习”（帮助学习者实现学习目标的能力）。尽管总体而言，VRAL 不如 IAL 更受参与者欢迎，它被认为在认知兴趣和“可访问性”（在时间和地点方面为学习者提供更好的学习方法的能力）方面更好。作为对先前研究的补充，这些发现支持了 VR 应用程序在帮助土木工程教育方面的好处。