Multimodal Learning Interfaces: Assessing The Effectiveness Of Haptic And Visual Interfaces On Student Learning Of Statics

Haptic technology is becoming more widely used as an educational tool. Providing force feedback to the students may improve their interest and understanding of the engineering subjects. In this study, we developed a multimodal user interface based on haptic technology and visualization to teach engineering statics concepts. The objective was to test the effectiveness of multimodal experience of haptics and visualization in teaching the statics concepts, as compared to the traditional teaching method. Twenty participants learned statics concepts illustrated with a beam problem in the classroom. They were then randomly divided into two groups. The first group carried out tasks in a multimodal lab, and took an exam. The second group took a pre-lab exam, performed tasks in the multimodal lab, and then took a post-lab exam. Both groups filled out a survey afterwards. Exam performances were compared between those who took the pre-lab exams with those who took the post-lab exams. The participants who performed tasks with the lab solved more of the difficult statics problems in the exam correctly, as compared to those who did not perform tasks with the lab. The results of survey evaluations of the multimodal lab showed an improvement in the understanding of the statics concepts and a real interest for the subject taught with the use of the multimodal experience. The results showed that educational haptics and visualization can bring a fundamental change to the way the engineering concepts are taught and learned.