Dr. Michael A. Hamilton 
Associate Director
Institute for Systems Engineering Research
Mississippi State
Friday, September 21, 2018
2:30-3:30 JDT 410
Abstract:
In the domain of Industrial Engineering (IE), there are several theoretical concepts such as, inventory theory and queuing theory. The implementation of VR technology in the IE domain can benefit students by providing an immersive and interactive environment and presenting a more practical and visual context to the theoretical concepts than can be provided through traditional teaching methods. The proposed VR teaching modules allow students 1) to experience the sense of being present in a virtual queuing system environment that is representative of a real-world engineering situation, 2) to expand their natural perceptive abilities and authentic experience, and 3) to eliminate the need to deal with any expensive equipment or risky environments to understand the application of queuing theory. The purpose of the research is to investigate how well students gained conceptual knowledge of queuing theory using the developed VR teaching module. Queueing theory is defined as the mathematical study of waiting lines. In this study students were provided a conceptual queuing theory quiz after the VR teaching module, and then they performed the NASA-TLX to evaluate their perceived workload and effort in competing conceptual quiz. Results showed that students performed well on the theoretical conceptual quiz, and the overall perceived work effort was mentally and physically low.
Bio:
Dr. Michael A. Hamilton is an Associate Director at Mississippi State Institute for System Engineering Research (ISER) in Vicksburg, MS. He received his Doctorate, Master and Bachelor degrees in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Mississippi State University and has a graduate certificate in Modeling, Simulation, and Visualization Engineering from Old Dominion University. He also received two certifications in Big Data Analytics from University of California, San Diego and Data Science from John Hopkins University. He worked several years in the printing manufacturing industry where he served in numerous positions such as a Manufacturing Engineer, Global Expansion Engineer, and the Manager of Production Operations for the Memphis Division at Mimeo.com. Afterwards, he worked for the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dalhgren Division (NSWCDD) as a Human System Integration Engineer and the project lead for the Human System Integration Research and Development Group. Currently, he is the technical lead for Big Data Analytic & Visualization, Surrogate Modeling & VR/AR related efforts in conjunction with the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC).