A Virtual Reality Lab for Automotive Service Specialists: A Knowledge Transfer System in the Digital Age

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript focuses on VR and knowledge transfer. These are topics of great significance. The manuscript however has several structural issues that need to be addressed to be considered for publication.

The concept of knowledge transfer in the context of education is not described accurately and without any relevant references. It is not synonymous with the remote teaching or distant lecturing or online learning but rather the ability to apply taught conceptual and procedural knowledge and skills in authentic professional contexts [1,2].

The manuscript’s sections need to be reordered.

The introduction contains just one reference and does not link coherently with the main focus of the study.

Section 3 is the background literature review that should be moved in the background section.

An additional literature review section on transfer and VR should be added with recent publications e.g. [3,4].

A methodology section is missing.

Among the 44 references are at least 8 self-citations of authors, a high percentage. Additionally, there is a noticeable pattern in citations that is inhibiting a representative view of the field. I suggest enriching the manuscript with published works from other parts of the world.

Other issues:

L48-52: Please add a suitable reference about the newly introduced concept.

References

1.          Burke, L.A.; Hutchins, H.M. Training Transfer: An Integrative Literature Review. Human Resource Development Review 2007, 6, 263–296, doi:10.1177/1534484307303035.

2.          Mystakidis, S. Deep Meaningful Learning. Encyclopedia 2021, 1, 988–997, doi:10.3390/encyclopedia1030075.

3.          Nietfeld, J.L. Predicting Transfer from a Game-Based Learning Environment. Comput Educ 2019, 103780, doi:10.1016/J.COMPEDU.2019.103780.

4.          Garrett, M.; McMahon, M. Indirect Measures of Learning Transfer between Real and Virtual Environments. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 2013, 29, 806–822, doi:10.14742/ajet.445.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We appreciate your  feedback on our paper. Please see file which explain our responses to the comments, and we highlighted all changes in the manuscript as track changes.

Best regard,

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper describes a VR-based application for teaching some scenarios and terminology regarding the automotive training. First, the paper provides some statistics regarding general aspects of remote knowledge transfer. Next, it provides an overview of related work. In the next part, the authors briefly describe the proposed VR application and, finally, they evaluate the application on the students. The paper is interesting to read and mostly easy to follow, however, there are some issues, which require some corrections.

The paper is quite wordy, especially in relation to its informational value:

• Related work is problematic the most. Can this part be condensed? The related work has to be described more in the view of this paper. 

• There is some redundancy in the paper, e.g. line 120 and  figure 3 report the same numbers

Next, the abstract is quite long but it is missing some information: Especially, the motivation is quite long. On the other hand, it is unclear, what are the main contributions of the paper? What are the main findings of the paper? What is sample size (number of the students).

The paper has a strange structure. First, the authors report some statistics regarding the general remote teaching, then they proceed with the related work and then they continue with the results. In the results the authors describe the developed application. The paper has to be reorganized. All statistics and results have to be reported in section “Results”. Used tools, software, hardware, data regarding attendees, etc., should be reported in section “Materials and methods”. 

Figure 6 is unclear. What are numbers, such as “1191111?

Description regarding the attendees is unclear. Are the students in section “Results” the same as in the “introduction”?  Please provide additional data. 

Authors state in line 247: “ the new methodology significantly improved”. This new methodology has to be briefly described. What is new in this methodology? What are the advantages? Same applies to the similar parts of the paper. 

Text in figure 7 has some issues with spelling.

Survey results in Fig. 11 are missing some important information regarding distribution. Individual answers per question should be presented with box plot and/or histogram. There are some statistics missing. Details regarding the distribution of answers have important value for conclusion. 

Please, in section 4.3 explicitly state sample size: number of students. Same applies to the abstract. 

A lot of details regarding application are missing. How is the interaction performed, what are actual scenarios, how fast it works, etc. 

There are some typos:

• line 100: “. .”

• Figure 2: “3D YEAR”

• Line 229: [12Error! Bookmark not defined.].

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We appreciate your  feedback on our paper. Please see file which explain our responses to the comments, and we highlighted all changes in the manuscript as track changes.

Best regard,

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

* there is no qualitative analysis of world studies devoted to a scientific problem
* does not have benchmarking tools for creating virtual student learning tools
* it is not clear whether licensed software was used to create virtual locations. which may be copyright infringement
* the description of the content of the research is narrow and needs to be expanded with regard to specific examples
* it is not clear from the description of the experiment to what extent the null hypothesis was rejected and which data were taken as a general population

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We appreciate your  feedback on our paper. Please see file which explain our responses to the comments, and we highlighted all changes in the manuscript as track changes.

Best regard,

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The introduction and background sections improved greatly, well done.

L444: Please expand and improve the description of VR lab used in the current study. Include important information to readers about the intervention such as target audience, indented learning outcomes, duration, learning process and activities. It is important to provide solid evidence to support why this intervention constitutes indeed “deep knowledge transfer” and not “superficial information transmission”.

L455: The comparison is not so relevant here and is confusing. I suggest either moving it to a separate subsection or reducing its length. In this context, Fig. 4 is not necessary. On the contrary here is the spot to add screenshots of the actual virtual lab.

L479: What was the rationale behind the choice of the specific questions related to the learning target? The number of questions (five) appears to be low in comparison to other quantitative research studies.

L486: This appears to be a general question, unrelated to the remote technologies of digital methods of knowledge transfer.

L488: This question is not clear; how was the new experience acquired? What is the “result of work” and why is important or not?

L490: Again, this appears to be a general question, unrelated to the remote technologies of digital methods of knowledge transfer.

L492: This too appears to be a general question, unrelated to the remote technologies of digital methods of knowledge transfer.

L493: This question is confusing. Since you are using a new environment, questions should be aimed a this experience, not general perceptions that are not clear whether they include the new solution or not.

L501: The results do not correspond to the questions described in section 4.3.

L563: Subsection 5.2 belongs to section 4.

L635: These results also do not correspond to the questions described in section 4.3. You have to explain in detail what data you collect, how and why.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We appreciate your  feedback on our paper. Please see file which explain our responses to the comments, and we highlighted all changes in the manuscript as track changes.

Best regard,

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper has been improved significantly, therefore, there are only few remaining issues left.

Separator for the decimal part in numbers must be ".". This applies all over the paper, e.g. Figures 2, 5, 6.

Detailed statistical insight is still missing, converting all bar graphs to box plots would be sufficient, please see this description: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_plot

There is some strange wording at few places, e.g. “kicks in” in Table 1, because some description was copied from the internet?

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We appreciate your  feedback on our paper. Please see file which explain our responses to the comments, and we highlighted all changes in the manuscript as track changes.

Best regard,

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

not enough high-quality analysis of tools for creating virtual laboratories of student learning - it is not clear which characteristics have become key

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We appreciate your  feedback on our paper. Please see file which explain our responses to the comments, and we highlighted all changes in the manuscript as track changes.

Best regard,

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

L430: Please provide more details about and explain the design of the questionnaire. What items does it contain? How was it constructed? How is it linked to the research aims and questions of the study?

L450: “They” refers to students?

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We appreciate your  feedback on our paper. Please see file which explain our responses to the comments, and we highlighted all changes in the manuscript as track changes.

Best regard,

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx