Empirical evidence, evaluation criteria and challenges for the effectiveness of virtual and mixed reality tools for training operators of car service maintenance

Borsci, Simone; Lawson, Glyn; Broome, Simon

Abstract

The debate on effectiveness of virtual and mixed reality (VR/MR) tools for training professionals and operators is long-running with prominent contributions arguing that there are several shortfalls of experimental approaches and assessment criteria reported within the literature. In the automotive context, although car-makers were pioneers in the use of VR/MR tools for supporting designers, researchers started only recently to explore the effectiveness of VR/MR systems as mean for driving external operators of service centres to acquire the procedural skills necessary for car maintenance processes. In fact, from 463 journal articles on VR/MR tools for training published in the last thirty years, we identified only eight articles in which researchers experimentally tested the effectiveness of VR/MR tools for training service operators’ skills. To survey the current findings and the deficiencies of these eight studies, we use two main drivers: i) a well-known framework of organizational training programmes, and ii) a list of eleven evaluation criteria widely applied by researchers of different fields for assessing the effectiveness of training carried out with VR/MR systems. The analysis that we present allows us to: i) identify a trend among automotive researchers of focusing their analysis only on car service operators’ performance in terms of time and errors, by leaving unexplored important pre- and post-training aspects that could affect the effectiveness of VR/MR tools to deliver training contents – e.g., people skills, previous experience, cibersickness, presence and engagement, usability and satisfaction and ii) outline the future challenges for designing and assessing VR/MR tools for training car service operators.

Citation

Borsci, S., Lawson, G., & Broome, S. (2015). Empirical evidence, evaluation criteria and challenges for the effectiveness of virtual and mixed reality tools for training operators of car service maintenance. Computers in Industry, 67, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compind.2014.12.002

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Feb 1, 2015
• Deposit Date: Mar 11, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 11, 2016
• Journal: Computers in Industry
• Print ISSN: 0166-3615
• Electronic ISSN: 0166-3615
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 67
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compind.2014.12.002
• Keywords: Augmented and virtual reality; Automotive; Service maintenance; Training effectiveness; Training evaluation
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/984980
• Publisher URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166361514002073