Fazenda 3D: Evaluation of a virtual environment for farming technical education

Abstract

This paper presents the application outcomes of a three-dimensional virtual environment which simulates a farm, called Fazenda 3D, in the Technical Course on Agriculture and Farming of the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Amazonas, at Parintins city. The purpose of the software is to support the technical subjects studies of the course. In order to evaluate the software we use a questionnaire based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM model), we also added questions to identify the students' profile who used the software and to collect suggestions for software improvements for future versions. The results showed that with the support of the software the students were able to better understand the functioning of a rural property and obtained a better basis for the subjects, besides we also verified the need for improvements in the environment.