More than a Virtual Teacher’s Aid
Before COVID-19, identifying a skills gap or weakness was pretty straightforward. As an instructor, you could pop into a welding booth at any time and observe the problems students were encountering.
Now, a larger portion of class time is devoted to talking about those issues as a group and putting the VRTEX® virtual reality welding trainer to use. The beauty of the VRTEX is two-fold. While it helps students develop the muscle memory needed to execute a weld properly in the welding booth, it also serves as a valuable tool for demonstrations the whole class can benefit from and safely participate in.
While we still provide live demonstrations, social distancing protocols require only two-students view them at a time. With VRTEX, instructors can display a live video feed as a student is welding virtually. With the ability to playback and pause, the instructor can also focus on a specific area of the weld and provide immediate feedback for improvement.
“One student might have had a real bad day the day before and all it took was getting together and talking about it, then going over it on the VRTEX and really focusing on the issues they were having,” said Christopher Kish, a Lincoln Electric welding instructor, who is currently using the VRTEX to teach fillet welds with 6010 vertical up and 7018 overhead. “They get out into the lab and then they knock it out of the park.”
