3D Virtual Learning Environment for Engineering Students - Web-Based Engineering Education: Critical Design and Effective Tools - page 44

Figure 2. Different levels of resource-based learning

to favor social interaction and learning. They of-
fer the possibility to simulate the real world as it
is or to create new worlds. Interacting with these
environments, people can actively experiment
situations useful for understanding concepts as
well as learning to accomplish specific tasks.
CVEs support independent viewpoints for users:
they share the virtual environment to do highly
synchronous collaborative work, manipulating
the same virtual objects. Nevertheless, it is not an
easy task to create such an environment.
Virtual reality has been very popular and suc-
cessful in other areas including entertainment
and urban planning. It has also been extensively
used within manufacturing industries and military
bodies. In addition, the benefits of 3D graphics
for education have been explored. Many 3D re-

sources have already been developed in this area.
3D models are very useful to familiarize students
with features of different shapes and objects, and
can be particularly useful in teaching younger
students. Many games have been developed us-
ing 3D images that the user must interact with in
order to learn a certain lesson. Interactive models
increase a user's interest and make learning more
fun. 3D animations can be used to teach students
different procedures and mechanisms for carrying
out specific tasks. Virtual reality has also been used
extensively for simulations and visualization of
complex data. For example, medical disciplines
use virtual reality to represent complex structures
and increasingly scientists are using this technol-
ogy for visualization and in particular as a teaching
aid (Monahan, et al., 2008).