Addressing misconceptions about engineering through student-industry interaction in a video-augmented 3D immersive virtual world

A key goal of engineering education is to ensure students are adequately prepared to enter professional practice. Unfortunately, students have been found to bring to university significant misconceptions about the types of work engineers perform, which can have an adverse impact on their readiness to fully appreciate and benefit from course activities. This paper presents a case study of how iSee, a collaborative online platform that allows for video conferencing within a three-dimensional immersive virtual world, was used to host a careers fair event in which students learned about the engineering profession and about the various engineering majors available to them by networking and interacting with alumni and faculty. The planning and execution of the event are described, along with the pedagogical, technological, and logistical considerations and design decisions that were made. Preliminary results suggest the activity, despite being low cost, was effective at generating productive dialogue between participants that focused on what students could expect upon graduating in terms of employment prospects, as well as the academic pathways and other learning opportunities they needed to pursue to realize their goals.