Immersive education: William (Bill) Koffel highlights how VR and AR technologies address global challenges in fire protection engineering
Iain Hoey
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By William (Bill) Koffel, P.E., FSFPE, SASHE, Director, Undergraduate Fire Protection Engineering Online Program, University of Maryland
Graduates from fire protection engineering programs routinely receive multiple job offers as the number of available positions in the discipline significantly outpace the number of graduates from the undergraduate and graduate programs.
Employers often need to hire graduates from other engineering programs and incur the cost of on-the-job training to provide the employee with the necessary knowledge, skills, and experience to practice fire protection engineering.
In the USA, graduation from an ABET-accredited BS program in engineering is one of the easier paths for engineers to achieve status as a Professional Engineer.
The new online undergraduate fire protection engineering program now makes earning a BS in FPE from an accredited program available to students globally.
One of the challenges associated with offering the courses to an international student population is to replicate the experiential learning opportunities that are available to on-campus students.
For that reason, virtual reality (VR) systems are being developed as an alternative to traditional education opportunities.
Research has shown that virtual reality can improve the learning process (Cicek, Bernik, & Igor, 2021).
The following three hypotheses were proven by Cicek: Respondents prefer to use VR over two-dimensional displays; Respondents believe the use of VR systems will increase interest in certain teaching content; and respondents believe that interactive media into the curriculum will improve learning outcomes.
An alternative to virtual reality, augmented reality (AR) will also be explored based upon a study conducted by a group affiliated with the University of Maryland (Childs, et al., 2023).
It has been noted that perceived immersion, technical quality, enjoyment, learning, and social influence all affected the adoption of AR technology in the learning process (Ghobadi, Ghiai, & Tahmasebinia, 2023).
Another research study involved a control group who only had access to traditional two-dimensional schematics and an experimental group who had access to a three-dimensional model (Hain & Motaref, 2023).
The students were all enrolled in an entry-level engineering course in Mechanics of Materials, although almost all students were considered to be in their third year of higher education.
Both groups took an exam at the beginning of the research so that the improvement in scores could be evaluated on a post-research exam.
The exam results indicated that: Students who had access to 3D models performed better in identifying failure modes and project geometry; Students who had access to 3D models felt more comfortable and confident in understanding the project geometry; Neither the control group or the experimental group performed better with engineering problems that relied heavily on engineering concepts rather than visualization.
The benefits of VR and AR technology to facilitate immersive learning for students that do not have access to physical facilities have been well documented.
It has also been documented that the investment in VR and AR laboratories is also a good investment for an institution of higher learning (Marks & Thomas, 2022).
This is especially true if the laboratory is also used for demonstrations, other training activities, engagement of industry, and high-school student visits.
The faculty at the University of Maryland has acknowledged that the investment in VR/AR technology will also enhance the learning process for on-campus students.
About the IFSJ Influencer
William (Bill) Koffel, P.E., FSFPE, SASHE is the Director, Undergraduate Fire Protection Engineering Online Program, University of Maryland.
Prior to his Faculty Appointment, Mr. Koffel was the President of Koffel Associates, a fire protection engineering and code consulting firm, and remains with the firm as Senior Director, Special Projects.
He is also a Partner with Koffel Fire and Safety Consultancy with offices in the UAE.
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