The authors had unique opportunities to successfully carry out important and creative activities in Second Life (a 3-D virtual community), with VR headsets, and in Spatial.io. They instructed their students to participate in problem-based learning projects (PBL) in Second Life (SL) on a virtual island owned by Nagaoka University of Technology in Japan. The PBL method provides students with challenging ill-structured problems to solve. They work cooperatively in a group to obtain possible solutions to the problems, while their instructors serve as guides. In addition, the group wore VR headsets to have realistic experiences with ocean life and dinosaurs. The authors also joined Spatial.io, a website that includes a variety of human-computer interaction techniques. They explored interesting locations, played games, examined various items, and struggled with a digital twin project.

In recent years, virtual platforms have emerged as powerful tools for immersive communication, education, and collaborative design. Among them, Spatial offers a widely accessible 3D environment that can be experienced not only through VR goggles but also on standard desktop systems. This paper explores the feasibility of using Spatial in a desktop 2D environment without VR goggles to visualize and evaluate 3D CAD models. We describe a practical workflow in which 3D models are uploaded into Spatial and viewed via a Mac desktop interface. Despite the limitations in immersion, we show that desktop interaction with Spatial still offers meaningful spatial understanding and interface operability, providing a low-barrier entry into virtual prototyping. We discuss implications for design education and outline future directions for integrating VR when available.

This paper provides a general and interesting presentation for connecting virtual worlds to game design. It defines virtual worlds as computer-based environments where users can interact by using an avatar or playable characters that are included in video games. Individuals can make a virtual world by joining a virtual world platform like Second Life and creating their own space. To create a virtual world from scratch, a game engine is needed. Virtual worlds serve as the setting for games. Game design is the creation and shaping of the rules and content of the game. It includes the preparation of stories, characters, goals, and challenges. Games can be used for entertainment, education, and for other purposes. The authors visited a class at SUNY Canton to observe an introductory course about building virtual worlds for game design. They gave survey forms to the new college students who were in the initial stage of designing virtual worlds for their games. This paper includes some preliminary and general information obtained by analyzing the results of the surveys completed by the class participants. It also provides a general description of the steps necessary for planning and creating a video game.

This study analyzes students’ impressions of deep-sea 3D video experiences delivered through a head-mounted display. Four female students watched an undersea expedition video and answered seven structured questions, followed by an open-ended prompt. Their responses revealed that 3D imagery significantly enhanced immersion, visual appeal, and educational engagement compared to traditional 2D images. Participants consistently rated the questions highly, citing immersive qualities, sustained attention, and increased understanding as notable benefits. A co-occurrence network analysis of the open-ended responses identified "immersive," "realistic," and "engaging" as central themes, reflecting how students felt deeply involved in the depicted scenes. "Educational" and "understanding" emerged as interconnected concepts, indicating students perceived that 3D visuals improved their comprehension of complex subjects. Terms like "fun" and "enjoyable" linked closely with "3D viewing," emphasizing the technology’s motivational value. Overall, this study confirms that 3D imagery offers substantial educational benefits by promoting focus, understanding, and enjoyment, suggesting potential applications in fields requiring spatial comprehension. However, due to the small sample size, results cannot be fully generalized.

This paper presents one project on integrating digital innovation in faculty development by creating academic portfolios. Academic portfolios document the multifaceted achievements of faculty members and help them in their professional progress and self-evaluation. This initiative adopted a systematic approach following the TU guidelines, incorporating lectures, mentoring, and collaborative sessions, and guiding educators to create portfolios that integrate teaching, research, and service activities. The project’s use of digital tools enabled time efficiency, accessibility, and iterative improvement and improved the transparency and scope of faculty performance. The digital platform also facilitated real-time feedback and integration of the portfolio with a wider digital repository, which aligns with environmentally sustainable practices. Participant feedback highlighted increased motivation and a deeper understanding of the interaction between teaching and research. The project demonstrated that the digital portfolio powerfully aligned teachers’ activities with their professional ethos and promoted continuous development and personal growth goals. This approach suggests the potential for transforming faculty development in the academic community.

This study delves into the innovative initiative at Suzuka National College of Technology, where a creative workshop initially established onsite for entrepreneurial experimentation has been replicated in a virtual space to enhance the educational experience in startup education; by integrating real-time simulations with foundational business theories the virtual center not only provides a platform for testing business ideas through simulations that mimic market reactions and consumer behavior but also bridges the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application, which is crucial in practical engineering education where experiential learning is key. This dual-environment approach not only facilitates the development of practical skills but also enables students to gain insights into the realities of business management and innovation, preparing them effectively for the challenges of the entrepreneurial world; the future of this virtual center looks promising as it plans to incorporate tools for business planning, financial forecasting, and market analysis to provide a comprehensive preparation platform for students, ensuring they are well-equipped to conceive, plan, and execute their business ideas successfully.

This paper describes three creative teaching activities that motivate and engage students into active learning. The teaching methods used include hybrid e-learning and virtual reality. The hybrid e-learning style is a combination of e-learning and a hands-on activity in a laboratory setting. For one hybrid e-learning project, students are asked to design, build, and test seawalls to help protect Japan from future tsunamis. In the other hybrid e-learning project, student teams are challenged to invent the best tasting nutritious fruit juice by using various fruits, blenders, water, plasticware, and other items. For the third project, participants use virtual reality (VR) headsets to learn about rollercoasters and to experience the thrill of riding on one.

The term "metaverse" has become a common word in recent years. This term, a virtual space on the Internet, is gaining importance in various fields in today's era of remarkable progress toward the fusion of virtual space and real space using digital science. The authors have been engaged in a project to develop educational applications using experiences in 3D virtual space with headset-type goggles. In this study, we investigated the physiological effects on the viewer by observing and analyzing the blink and discussed its applicability.

This paper describes the advantages of using virtual reality (VR) environments like Second Life (SL) and VR headsets to motivate and engage students into active learning. Two advantages of virtual reality are that it allows users to see and interact in a three-dimensional world. Research results for the use of VR are also presented and compared to those of the traditional textbook teaching method. In addition, the authors share their successful problem-based learning (PBL) activities carried out in SL and their creative lesson ideas for using VR headsets with students.

In this study, we introduce a plan about the application of various realities for future educational purposes. To start, we provide an overview for three types of realities [Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR)] and clarify their relationships to each other. Then we classify VR tools into three types and focus on the integrated stand-alone type and prepare a plan for its educational application. Finally, we discuss important factors that could contribute to the examinees’ educational outcomes in the future.

The concept of a 3D experience using the Google Cardboard VR headset and cell phones is discussed in terms of its educational effect. As for the video component, content on YouTube as a 360°VR video is used. The following three topics are included in this project: skydiving, lunar exploration, and deep-sea exploration. In some organizations, groups of faculty and student members are asked to participate in such an activity to experience 3D using a cell phone and YouTube along with the VR headset. The authors plan to analyze the results using a 5-point scale. A similar experiment is already in progress. It involves the use of a different VR headset tool (Oculus Quest). Since the contents of both activities are similar, the purpose of this experiment is to compare and verify the advantages and disadvantages of using a VR cardboard headset and a cell phone, as well as to identify the advantages and disadvantages of using a cell phone.

The coronavirus pandemic has had a major impact on education. As a result of this crisis, instructors world-wide had to quickly adapt and shift to remote teaching. This paper presents and describes technologies (such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Virtual Worlds, etc.) to promote active student learning during a pandemic. It also provides general information about the coronavirus and the learning environment that it created.

During the COVID 19 pandemic, the importance of global academia-industrial alliances has increased. It is hoped that the alliances will help us to solve the current problems caused by the pandemic. In this paper, we introduce the application of IT tools and communication skills utilized in a special educational project for an academia-industrial collaboration. Some concrete examples from 2020 are provided from the viewpoint of the national alliance project in Japan. A discussion is included that describes the plans available to increase and strengthen the national project in the future.

For this study, instructors carried out active learning classes using tools to obtain biological information. Due to the constrained conditions for their use, students proposed their own projects and successfully carried them out on their own. The students belonged to two groups: one was for17 year old students and the other was for the students 19 years of age. Both groups displayed good creativity and engineering design capabilities. However, there was a clear difference between the two groups. The older students had more quantitative and application-related capabilities. We could confirm that the age demographic in KOSEN education was very sensitive for the improvement of creative engineering design capability.

This paper introduces and describes a learning system for analyzing devices in a virtual world and points out its significance for current research collaboration. Now we are in Society 5.0, so daily problems should be solved by IoT (Internet of Things) with a mutual collaboration without borders. The authors need to collaborate with each other among remote organizations and different nations. For such situations, we need to establish the learning system for analyzing devices which would lead to an actual sharing system in the future. In this paper, the proposed concept for the learning system in metaverse is explained. The significance of the system is described, too.

An experimental trial was carried out with a problem-based learning (PBL) class for students. They were asked to come up with a plan for applying a glass sensor to determine concentration power. They held a discussion and agreed on a system and process, in which students would focus on memorizing English words. The process had three components. While studying English words, the students listened to music at the same time. As a second component, when the learning time was not long enough, students could concentrate on learning the words without any music. However, when the learning time was prolonged, the combination of learning and outcomes was higher for the case of memorizing 10 words. The students defined a coefficient that was based on the average of memorizing capability and concentration power. The results and the system are a unique case study. We believe the basic concept could be applied to the final trial for mutual non-verbal communication.

In this innovative practice work-in-progress paper, we discuss novel methods to teach machine learning concepts to undergraduate students. Teaching machine learning involves introducing students to complex concepts in statistics, linear algebra, and optimization. In order for students to better grasp concepts in machine learning, we provide them with hands-on exercises. These types of immersive experiences will expose students to the different stages of the practical uses of machine learning. The data collection apparatus is based on applications (apps) developed for the Android platform. Due to the accessible nature of the app and the exercises based on the app, this approach is useful for students across all majors.We provide the students with three different sets of activities, the first of which will introduce the basics of machine learning with specially designed artificial datasets. The second and third activities involve data collection, modeling, training, and testing, as applied to machine learning algorithms. The second activity will involve collecting touch/swipe data on mobile devices from students as they use a touch logger app. The third activity uses the Reflections app to collect cross-correlation data from rooms with different purposes. These hands-on activities guide the students through every step of the machine learning process. Student learning is assessed for each activity by holding workshops for undergraduate students. A workshop with the first activity outlining the basics of machine learning was given in the fall of 2018 and significant student learning was demonstrated. Workshops for the second and third activities are planned for the fall semester of 2019. Results from these workshops will be presented at the conference.

Mars, the most Earth-like of the planets, has motivated scientists to search for life there. Presently, plans are in the works for landing humans on the Red planet between 2025 and the 2030s. Young students of today may have an opportunity to travel to Mars and /or serve as future astronauts. Therefore, it is important to provide them with enjoyable and rewarding learning experiences about space travel and the planet Mars. This paper describes successful STEM activities that use innovative e-learning to simulate components of real Mars missions.

E-learning is a powerful educational tool nowadays. Particularly, it could activate classrooms and enhance the understanding of educational content taught by teachers. However, teachers often have various difficulties for using e-learning. One problem is for them to produce educational tools on their own. Some teachers need support for this type of activity. From the viewpoint, it is very important for us to know the various types of support that teachers need. In this study, we focused on teachers’ mental situations when they produce educational materials for their classrooms. We aimed to establish a model, so that the data of eye blinking could be analyzed and applied to evaluate teachers’ psychological and mental situations. Using a commercial glass-type sensor to observe eye blinking behaviors, we measured them for three teachers (as examinees), while they were producing their own presentation files. The data for the blinking behaviors were compared with the concentration power index and analyzed. And we discussed the possibility of applying the model to determine how teachers could be supported technically.

The central focus of this work-in-progress is to investigate the following: (1) What do the lesson plans created by teachers reveal about their understanding of science and engineering practices? (2) Will including programming exercises in all lesson plans improve STEM skills in general, and coding skills in particular? And (3) Will integrating science and engineering practices in high school lesson plans improve student retention in STEM and STEM-related areas? To answer these questions, we develop project-based lessons and mobile app-based laboratories that incorporate science and engineering practices. Additionally, with these apps, we: a) enable and motivate students to learn STEM topics by immersing themselves in interactive apps, b) include lesson content and electronic labs delivered using the latest mobile technology and platforms, and c) provide teacher training to better improve content delivery. We will design innovative Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) lesson plans and immersive labs, to create a transformative educational experience for high school students. The lessons and labs will be deployed with the help of mobile applications (apps) that will use multi-sensory and multimodal inputs and outputs to interact with students, and be designed to align with the newly adopted 2017 New York State Science Learning Standards.

A virtual workshop for creative teaching was successfully carried out in Second Life (SL) with elementary school teachers (teachers of young children). Creative teaching is important for engaging and motivating students (of all ages) to pursue academic studies, especially in the areas of STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics). Countries need a supply of qualified STEM graduates to compete globally, creatively solve challenging problems, and provide the scientists, engineers, etc. of the future. The participants had no previous experience with SL, so they enjoyed the workshop very much and liked the creative setting (virtual classroom) and opportunity to make and operate their own avatars. This paper describes five creative teaching techniques, the teachers’ brainstorming session, and lesson ideas for turning students onto learning.

Students’ psychological responses were evaluated by a commercial electrooculography (EOG) sensor. As psychological responses, we picked up two factors – concentration power and the impression about the simplicity for problem solving. A glass-type EOG sensor detected the electrooculogram and calculated the blink rate (focus), the blink strength (calmness) and the head posture (posture), constituting the final parameter called concentration power. In this study, we investigated the correlation between the two psychological responses and EOG parameters. We could confirm the qualitative correlation between the EOG parameter corresponding to concentration power and the psychological response. At this point, we presume that it could be applied to e-learning in virtual classrooms soon. As for the impression about the simplicity to solve problems, we could not found the reasonable correlation. However, the detailed analyses for all of the parameters and their time-dependent behaviors might make it clearer and also other relations with more psychological response.

An Android-based eModule app has been designed and developed for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. The eModule consists of: (1) an Android demonstration of echolocation; (2) a set of notes describing the functionality of the app, the basics of echolocation, and its application to advanced signal processing systems such as RADAR, LIDAR, and SONAR; (3) quizzes to test the concepts introduced by the demonstration and the notes; and (4) companion videos. The eModule is, therefore, a holistic teaching and learning app that can be used across various grade levels including K-12, undergraduate signals and systems, and graduate DSP education.The app, “Reflections”, provides students a means to determine distances to objects while allowing them the ability to manipulate signal envelopes, signal shapes, signal types, and frequency constraints. The intuitive graphical user interface, combined with notes, videos and quizzes, creates a rich educational environment to help educate users with the fundamental concepts of signals, systems, and digital signal processing. In addition to its role in STEM education, the app has potential use in low-visibility environments and for spatial acoustic analysis. Preliminary assessments strongly support the effectiveness of the eModule as an education tool signals and systems and DSP classes.

A project about renewable energy was successfully carried out in Second Life (SL) by a team of Japanese students with a U.S. instructor who used English to communicate. This was a challenging task, especially since the students’ first language is Japanese. To improve the learning environment, a teaching assistant was available to translate information from English to Japanese when necessary. This paper describes the successful STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) activity in SL where the Japanese students designed and built a special airplane for wind energy. It also mentions other contributions of our work, such as the incorporation of an Engineering Design Process into the lesson and the advantages we found by carrying out the renewable energy project in a virtual reality environment.

The discussion through Skype on research topics between two laboratories were carried out as virtual problem based learning project. During the discussion, the blinking eyes were counted as biological data. After the project, questionnaires were given to the participants. Two series of data, biological data by counting blinking eyes and psychological data derived from questionnaires were compared and analyzed. Both data were compatible reasonably and could be well explained complimentary. If the system could be established systematically, it would be a very powerful educational tools for both teachers and students in the future.

An Android app has been developed to assist in the education of individuals in a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) course of study. The Android Reflection Application provides students a means to determine distances to objects while allowing them the ability to manipulate signal envelopes, signal shapes, signal types, and frequency constraints. The convenient and intuitive graphical user interface immerses the user into a richly educational environment allowing for the solidification of fundamental concepts regarding digital signal processing (DSP). In addition to the educational benefits, this application is also being applied to spatial acoustic analysis and assistance in low-visibility. This feature will allow users to determine the best use for a given space whether it is a quiet study room or a room better suited for conference meetings. The effectiveness of this application has not yet been formally tested but suggests a positive result.

Nowadays, e-learning and the application of ICT to learning in various ways are going to move to the forefront of education due to various reasons. However, the learning style often lacks the characteristics of students’ synchronized feedback in the class simultaneously, even though the information is always needed to achieve the tutorial effectiveness and educational outcomes in the virtual class. Some of the current authors have investigated the application of biological data, the number of eye blinks, to e-learning or distance learning on research based and confirmed that the changed behaviour of the number corresponded to the difficulty of the problems to some extent. In this experiment, we issued YouTube as the educational tool and investigated the correlation between biological data, blinking eyes, facial surface temperature measured by infrared thermography and students’ psychological behaviors. The blinking eyes behavior seemed to reflect the examinees’ confusion at the initial stage of the video session. On the other hand, the measurement of facial surface temperatures should be revised and modified, since the current methods did not take the effect of external temperatures and also the appropriateness of sampling into account. However, we presume at least that the blinking eyes could be applied to the feedback tool of students’ responses also in the e-learning by YouTube video sessions.

For a virtual problem-based learning (PBL) class in Metaverse, an eye blinking system for avatars was introduced. It correlated their eye blinking behavior with an emotional response to various problems that they were asked to discuss on behalf of their users. Three Japanese college students joined the project where they discussed a simple and difficult problem, respectively. Teachers proposed online (mathematical problems) for them. Each session was 10 minutes in length. During the classes, the number of eye blinks was recorded for each student by using special software. After completing the PBL classes, the students answered questionnaires. Then the results were analyzed. All of the results suggested that the difficult question would make students’ feelings unstable and increase the number of eye blinks. Using this system, teachers could analyze students’ responses well to achieve a better outcome of virtual PBL.

Problem Based Learning (PBL) is an educational process by which problem-solving activities and instructor's guidance facilitate learning. The PBL is suffered from the current issues in the traditional education system such as enhancing quality, reducing cost and increasing access. Virtual e-Learning (VeL) can be overcome those issues and become a major way of delivering the knowledge. The VeL is in early stage and there are many ways to enhance the effectiveness of the VeL. The establishment of the non-verbal features, which are essential elements in the education process, [1] is a one way of improving the quality of VeL. One of the non-verbal features (Eye blink) is visualized in the VeL and the affection of that non-verbal feature to the VeL is accessed in this research. The eye blink, which is an important non-verbal feature of the real student [2], is mirrored in the VeL environment. The affection of the eye blink was evaluated through an experiment with the responses of the e-Learning participants. The experiment consisted by PBL sessions with and without eye blinking. The evaluated factors of the questionnaire showed that a high rate of positive responses during the sessions with the eye blinks than the session without the eye blinks and also the difference of the mean ranks is 25%. Further, Mann-Whitney U test is utilized to analyze the responses of the students to determine whether there is a significant difference in the sessions with and without the eye blinking. It is identified that the eye blink helps to enhance the effectiveness of the group discussion significantly over the effect size value (r) of the selected factors have more than 0.62 suggested a moderate to high practical significance when they utilized the eye blinks in the VeL.

The blend education of e-learning and hands-on activity was carried out, using Metaverse. The topic was picked up, relating to radioactivity, nuclear safety education and STEM education. The students were six 5th and 6th graders in an elementary school. The lecture was given to them through the virtual class in Metaverse (Second Life). And then, the hands-on experiments relating to radioactivity were carried out in real life, lead and guided by the teacher in Second Life synchronistically and supported by the teacher in real life sometimes. The questionnaire given to each of students after the hands-on experiments showed very clearly that the project satisfied with the original goals very well, from both viewpoints of STEM education and nuclear safety education at early stage (pre secondary) levels. We concluded that the blend education worked well for STEM education to much extent.

A project about nuclear safety was carried out through e-learning. It was a problem based learning (PBL) activity that took place in Second Life (SL), an online three-dimensional community. The virtual classroom was built on an island owned by Nagaoka University of Technology, Japan. Three students from a high school near Clarkson University participated in this project. A teacher gave them a short lesson about nuclear energy safety and then proposed the problem. The students understood the contents very well and solved the problem through voice chat interactions in SL. They engaged in active discussions and displayed high interest for the safe use of nuclear energy throughout this successful project. The results clearly indicate that this type of PBL class is possible for actual e-learning about nuclear safety and for engineering education.

Problem Based Learning (PBL) is a powerful tool for engineering design education. On the other hand, STEM education at pre-college levels is important, particularly for engineering education, to increase and maintain a nation's industrial competitiveness. In this paper, virtual PBL in Second Life was carried out for third graders (18 year old students) in some national colleges of technology, Japan. At the beginning of the class, teachers proposed an ill-structured problem for students to solve, like one in real life. The problem was “design your own eco-cars through virtual discussion and make them by prim virtually”. Students as avatars discussed the problem in Second Life using microphones. They designed their own eco-cars using pens and tablets and made virtual cars with prims. After the project was completed, they evaluated their work by offline questionnaires and online talks in the virtual world. All of the results were examined from the viewpoints of the effectiveness for engineering design and STEM education.