Do it yourself educational kits for vocational education and training

Abstract

Human motor skill training forms a large portion of the curriculum for any vocational education and training course. Construction personnel such as carpenters, plumbers and masons require long hours of training in order to gain expertise and workmanship to perform complex tasks skillfully. Poor skill in the use of tools results in sub-optimal outcome; compromised work quality and consumes additional cost. In this paper, we describe the design of a novel do-it-yourself educational tool that is built using low cost materials, open source software and hardware, the designs for which are freely downloadable. This educational toolkit uses haptic technology to augment the need for realism and is used to provide skill training in the use of vocational tools. The aim is to generate interest in vocational education and to provide greater accessibility for base level skill training.

Publication
Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on Interdisciplinary Advances in Applied Computing