A virtual simulation experiment platform of subway emergency ventilation system and study on its teaching effect

For safety engineering majors, it is very important to cultivate the practical ability of professional talents. Due to the difficulty of conducting experiments in dangerous environments, a virtual simulation experiment teaching platform was established. The platform allowed students to understand the structure of the subway ventilation room, and master the control requirements of the ventilation system in the event of sudden fire, blockage, and failure in the subway. Its construction used technologies such as 3D modeling, human–computer interaction, and VR. To test the teaching effect of the simulation experiment platform, two indexes of operating skills and cognitive load were selected to study and analyze the experimental results of students. The research adopts the method of stratified sampling, 46 boys and 10 girls were selected from the first-year students majoring in safety engineering, and they were randomly divided into experimental group and control group, with 23 boys and 5 girls in each group. The experimental group used the simulation platform for teaching, while the control group used the traditional teaching method. The score of the assessment module in the platform was taken as the index of students’ operating skills, and the cognitive load test was carried out by questionnaire to test the teaching effect. The test module scores showed that the average score of the experimental group was 32.79 points higher than that of the control group, and the results of the cognitive load test questionnaire showed that the experimental group scored 35.14% lower than the control group. The research shows that the virtual simulation experiment has a stronger teaching effect than the field experiment.