Teaching operations management with virtual reality (VR)

"If the mountain will not go to Muhammad, Muhammad must go to the mountain."

While the roots of this wisdom go back several centuries, recent advances in virtual reality (VR) technologies provide unprecedented opportunities for "bringing the mountain to Muhammad". In partnership with ABB, we developed a teaching case that integrates virtual environments of the manufacturers' real factories. We used the case in two operations management courses taught at ETH Zurich and evaluated the effects on students' learning experiences. We draw on the concept of immersion and the constructivist learning theory to discuss how the teaching innovation is expected to affect students' learning experience. To assess the effects, we used focus groups, feedback forms and surveys. We find that students generally perceived that virtual reality improved their learning experience, but also that the current state of the technology has several limitations.

Organisation by SWITCH

This event was organised by SWITCH.