Field trips turned on their head

Professor Torbjørn Netland and his team invert field trips: they bring the factory to the students. In the “FactoryVR” project they employ virtual reality tools to let students explore production facilities as if they were there. Through blended information and quizzes, students learn the ins and outs of operations in an immersive and exciting way.

FactoryVR has now won the Bronze Award in the Virtual/Augmented Reality category of the 2020 Reimagine Education competition – the world’s largest awards programme for innovative teaching. This year, over 1,500 applicants competed for the “Oscars of Education”. “We are very happy that we made it all the way to the podium,” says Netland. “The Silver and Gold winners in our category are big business already. Ours is perhaps simpler, but exceptionally scalable.”

The project is based on both open-access VR videos and apps, but also VR content developed by Netland’s team in cooperation with industrial partners such as Hilti. The tools manufacturer provided access to its factory in Thüringen, Austria, which students can now explore virtually with a smartphone – optionally mounted on an inexpensive head rig as VR goggles (see video).

Netland’s team showcased FactoryVR at the virtual Reimagine Education Conference on 9–11 December 2020 and is already using it in the Chair’s Production and Operations Management course. And Netland is already busy planning the next steps: “Our positive experiences with FactoryVR and its scalability and cost-effectiveness point to a promising future for VR applications in business education.”

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