2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Abstract:
Purpose: Integration of extended reality (XR) technologies in engineering education, particularly in engineering design courses, has gained traction recently. We integrated the XR prototype demonstration in a senior undergraduate Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering design course.

Methodology: ME386W is a senior design course that explores engineering design methods, including project planning and management, effective multi-disciplinary team skills, professional and effective technical writing, oral communication skills, professional ethics, and extended. This course is the last design course before the full-year capstone graduation project and does not involve making a physical prototype. The educational content, assessment plan, and rubric for integrating the XR demonstration are provided. Students’ opinion was collected using a survey approved by the university ethics review board. 47 out of 72 students participated voluntarily in the survey which was completely blind to the instructor. Three example projects are explained and outcomes are presented.

Results and Discussion:
XR educational content development: Educational content in the form of documents, videos, and training sessions was prepared to teach students how to translate their final designs from SolidWorks to other platforms that can be used for VR, AR, and MR.
XR demonstration and rubric: The XR demonstration was designed as a team assignment in which students were required to demonstrate the function(s) of their final design concept using an XR-developed prototype/environment.
Outcomes: An extended reality demonstration was successfully performed for all projects. Three examples of these projects and their outcomes were analyzed and presented: 1 - A geodesic dome for Mars habitation; 2- Dynamic Dolly; 3- Exofit Biomedical Device.
Student Evaluation and Feedback: Students found the course design including preparing the XR prototype demonstration was more engaging, the evaluation was less subjective, and the course design was more inclusive than lecture-based courses. However, 54.4% expressed that this course required more workload than the traditional lecture-based courses.

Conclusion: We successfully integrated the application of the XR prototype demonstration into a senior mechanical engineering design course. Some practical insights about the process are included and discussed.