Leverage Digital Transformation in Distance Learning for Maximum Students’ Engagement by Utilization of the Integrated Technologies of Digital Twin, Extended Realities, and Reinforcement Learning

Abstract

Purpose – Leveraging online educational services is recently the main concern of academia’s top management especially post the COVID-19 pandemic. This created some panic and challenges as to how to achieve the highest possible experiences and engagement for learners in online teaching platforms as well as the challenge of adopting new technologies in an educational context. This paper focuses on these two challenges to achieving the best possible educational digital transformation as the highest possible student engagement through highlighting available innovative educational technologies and proposing a framework based on Unity3d for integrating these technologies in Learning Management System (LMS).

Method – This research focuses on introducing a developmental framework to facilitate the integration of Digital Twin, Virtual/Augmented Reality, and Gamification technologies to utilize the teaching of Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) and Virtual Commissioning.

Results – The implementation of the digital twin prototype concept to replace the physical laboratories could be seen as a good opportunity to reduce costs allocated for purchasing physical laboratories and to increase safety factors of both students and equipment.

Conclusion – Even though developing virtual laboratories based on these technologies is still challenging, the use of the Unity3D platform and other open-source plugins and modules offer a great opportunity to facilitate the development and the integration of these into the LMS.

Recommendations – It is highly recommended to consider integrating these innovative technologies into the LMS to allow students to access PLC laboratories remotely and to make the distance learning approach more applicable and reliable for conducting practical electrical engineering-related tasks.

Practical Implications – Virtual laboratories can be developed using a range of open-source applications and plugins to utilize the integration of the recent innovative technologies, aiming to improve the practical training of vocational and engineering students in PLC programming tasks through having a customizable and scalable application that replaces physical machines.