2018 Best PIC I Paper: Industrial Engineering Division: Immersive Virtual Training Environment for Teaching Single- and Multi-queuing Theory: Industrial Engineering Queuing Theory Concepts

In the domain of Industrial Engineering (IE), there are several theoretical concepts such as, inventory theory and queuing theory. The implementation of VR technology in the IE domain can benefit students by providing an immersive and interactive environment and presenting a more practical and visual context to the theoretical concepts than can be provided through traditional teaching methods. The proposed VR teaching modules allow students 1) to experience the sense of being present in a virtual queuing system environment that is representative of a real-world engineering situation, 2) to expand their natural perceptive abilities and authentic experience, and 3) to eliminate the need to deal with any expensive equipment or risky environments to understand the application of queuing theory. The purpose of the research is to investigate how well students gained conceptual knowledge of queuing theory using the developed VR teaching module. Queueing theory is defined as the mathematical study of waiting lines. In this study students were provided a conceptual queuing theory quiz after the VR teaching module, and then they performed the NASA-TLX to evaluate their perceived workload and effort in competing conceptual quiz. Results showed that students performed well on the theoretical conceptual quiz, and the overall perceived work effort was mentally and physically low.