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CaseVR - Enhancing Case Method Teaching with Virtual Reality
Prof. Dr. Torbjörn Netland | D-MTEC

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This project "brings the factory into the classroom" of production and operations management courses. Case Method Teaching (CMT) has been established as a popular and effective way to teach socio-technical phenomena and concepts in higher education. The proposed project "CaseVR" significantly enhances CMT using Virtual Reality (VR).
Abstract
Background: The case method has proven to be a very effective teaching method that is close to reality and popular among students. The case method allows for active learning, which encourages initiative, critical thinking, and higher cognitive levels of understanding. Because of this, scholars in a growing number of disciplines have written a plethora of teaching cases during the last decades. This is also true in my discipline; Production and Operations Management (POM). To enable students to apply theoretical concepts in realistic tasks, I have always used the cased method in the courses I teach at ETH. What is the problem? Although cases make the teaching material more relevant and comprehensible than the usual textbook, they still suffer from approximations and lack of detail. Moreover, "the case" is still just a written description of an event or problem at a company. At best, available cases include audiovisual material (a "video case", which I have also used). I believe there is great potential in enhancing the case method with new digital technologies. This project brings the case to life, while allowing for cost-effective scaling of the important experience of seeing the settings in which the taught material can be applied. Our solution: We enhance a teaching case with Virtual Reality (VR). We have teamed up with ABB, which offers a VR application with 3-dimensional insights from several factories in Switzerland, Germany and Finland. We ask case questions that require students to explore the ABB factories with VR.
Success factors
• Provides students the effective learning experience of immersing into a real factory environment while circumventing the many administrative and financial limitations of field visits • Enables guided-explorative learning • Integrates scalable, modern and cost effective VR technology in teaching
Innovative elements
• Integration of VR in management classes is an innovation • Guided by assignments questions, students explore factory environments following their own curiosity and interests • Enables unprecedented accessibility to field immersion
Room for improvement
• In the follow-up project, we plan to create our own VR content (instead of using the content produced by ABB). We also found that the current state of VR technology has some technological limitations
Opinion of students
• “The VR experience was tremendous. Great way to get a good insight into production facilities and to start analyzing the situation.” (Student, ETH Zurich) • “I truly appreciate the effort and the new teaching method. It was very fun to experience a different learning method and it linked well with the topic of operational excellence.” (Student, ETH Zurich) • “It was very fun to experience a different learning method and it linked well with the topic of operational excellence.” (Student, ETH Zurich)
Tips for lecturers
management courses—especially in times of social distancing • It is a myth that VR is expensive to access and difficult to learn to master: Students can use technologies they already possess (smartphones), factory apps are offered for free, and VR headsets can be bought very cheaply • Carefully link the technology-enabled case assignments with the learning objectives of the course. • Carefully manage expectations; simple cardboard-based VR technology is not comparable with the state-of-the-art

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Authors
Torbjörn Netland
Assistant Professor
D-MTEC

Applicant Prof. Dr. Torbjörn Netland | Manager Prof. Dr. Torbjörn Netland | Contact person Prof. Dr. Torbjörn Netland
tnetland@ethz.ch
| Department D-MTEC | Institute Chair of Production and Operations Management | | Filing date 01.03.2018 | Period 19.02.2018 to 30.06.2020

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