A virtual reality experiment system for an introductory computer hardware course

The University Computer Foundation (UCF) course, which is a compulsory theoretical course for freshmen, especially science and engineering department students, lays the foundation for more advanced courses. However, the UCF course covers a wide variety of concepts, including the computer hardware, which are difficult for freshmen to comprehend. In recent years, virtual reality (VR) has become prevalent in many educational settings. To improve the teaching of the UCF course, we developed a VR program about introductory computer hardware and invited freshmen from two universities in China to take part in the experiment as participants. Four aspects of computer contents, namely the evolutionary history of computers, the computer components, the computer assembly, and the workflow of computer hardware, are displayed in the program. During the experiment, students' behavioral data were recorded. Then, the data were analyzed and the reasons were speculated for the differences among groups of various categories. From the experiment, the relationships between the students' behavior and their groups were found, and we demonstrated that our VR program is effective at attracting the students' curiosity and increasing their understanding of computer hardware in the UCF course. The study concludes with suggestions for practitioners and researchers in the field of VR for university education.