Immersive technologies provide training options for engineering students

Providing hands-on training options can be critical for student learning, but traveling to training sites is not always an option. Immersive technologies are helping to eliminate that roadblock for engineering students at Penn State Berks.

This summer, Marietta Scanlon, lecturer of engineering at the Berks campus, and sophomore Wyatt Ritchie collaborated to create 360-degree videos for a course to serve both as an introduction to principles in Scanlon’s IET 101 Manufacturing Materials, Processes and Laboratory course and provide information about specific equipment in the campus machine shop.

“The traditional way of learning is to take notes and look at pictures of how things work, which does get the point across but doesn’t provide a deep understanding and spark interest,” said Ritchie, who has been creating 360-degree videos for an industrial engineering technology (IET) course. He worked on this project as part of the multi-campus Research Experience for Undergraduates summer program. “Using this kind of technology does though, which is why I refer to a certain quote that I think explains how this technology provides a greater advantage over traditional ways of learning: ‘I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.’”