Construction and Application of VR-AR Teaching System in Coal-Based Energy Education

Coal-based energy has provided strong support and made outstanding contributions in the process of China’s economic development. Coal mining in China has gradually developed into intelligent, refined and green mining. However, due to the lack of effective science popularization and propaganda in coal mining for a long time, people’s understanding of coal mining often stays in the stereotype of dirty, messy and very dangerous. Based on this fact, this paper firstly discusses the difficulties and pain points of the popularization of science in coal mining based on the questionnaire survey. And then a VR-AR system for intelligent coal mining was developed. Finally, popular science teaching activities based on VR-AR system were carried out during the “Open Day” activity and “Entering Campus” activity. It is found that the long-term negative reports of coal mining and the complexity of coal mining system make the science popularization and propaganda in coal mining less effective. The proportion of primary and secondary school students with bad impression reached 85.0% and 90.3%, respectively, and 63.1% for college students. With our VR-AR system in coal-based energy education, the impression of the coal industry has increased significantly, the proportion of bad impression decreased to 23.4%. This helps to form the nationwide coal mining science popularization and justifies China’s coal mining.