Corrosion prevention and control training in an immersive virtual learning environment

The majority of military education and training has not veered far from the days of chalk and talk instruction. Often with technological breakthroughs comes the proposal of the next revolution in multimedia instruction. Motion pictures to radios to educational television programs have all seemed to come and gone. The next wave of multimedia learning may involve more than a PowerPointRTM presentation and lecture. Researchers continue to propose that Virtual Reality (VR) will find its true application and/or market in education and training. The objective of the project was to develop and provide a low-cost, scalable, and portable VR system containing purposely designed and developed immersive Virtual Learning Environments (VLE). The purpose of the research study was to empirically compare the routine classroom instructor-led training and immersive VLE training in terms of learning and long-term retention of basic Corrosion Prevention and Control (CPC) knowledge in U.S. Army soldiers after taking an U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Life Cycle Management Command (AMCOM) Corrosion Program Office (CPO) CPC training course. Usability evaluation of the VR system was also included. The immersive VLEs were a better form of multimedia instruction in terms of learning for basic CPC theories and principles than instructor-led lectures with PowerPoint. In terms of learning there was a statistically significant interaction between instruction type and time, Wilks' Lambda = .97, F(1, 138) = 3.942, p = .049. In terms of long-term retention there was no significant interaction between instruction type and time.