Virtual Environments in Materials Science and Engineering

Abstract

The use of virtual resources in university teaching is becoming a key issue, especially in engineering degrees where novel virtual environments are being developed. This chapter described a study on the opinions of engineering students with regard to the use of diverse virtual applications in subjects related to Materials Science and Engineering. From 2011 to 2014, engineering students of several universities and diverse nationalities were surveyed regarding their views on using virtual environments in learning. The results presented in this chapter showed that students gave great importance to the use of virtual resources in university teaching but, at the same time, they also considered the presence of the teacher in the classroom to be very essential. The findings also provided the timetable distribution of topics that, according to the students' opinion, should be considered in the subjects of Materials Science, such as master classes, problem solving classes, practical classes in both real and virtual laboratories.