Background
Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) sits at the centre of Ecuador's push to give learners job-ready skills, yet many of its public technical institutes face chronic shortages of modern labs and equipment — a gap that widened when COVID-19 disrupted hands-on instruction. The ACTIVaR programme (Active Training Using Virtual Reality) was created to close it, bringing mixed-reality auto-mechanics labs into the classroom so students can practise complex tasks safely, repeatedly and at low cost.
The deployment
ACTIVaR equipped five public Technical and Technological Institutes — Cotopaxi, Loja, Tungurahua, Luis Arboleda Martínez and Luis Rogelio González — with virtual labs, a competency-based curriculum and intensive teacher training. About 400 students a year now use the labs. Because the technology demands reliable connectivity, ICT support and digitally confident teachers, only around 16 of Ecuador's 80-plus public institutes met the readiness conditions, so the programme was deliberately concentrated in well-prepared sites.
Hardware and software
Each lab pairs zSpace interactive 3D workstations with AR-enabled tablets, supporting up to 35 students per room. The learning content — nine modules covering the internal combustion engine, from identifying parts to assembling and disassembling complete systems — was co-designed by faculty from Cotopaxi institute and specialists at Namseoul University, with the ACTIVaR software built by Namseoul students alongside the World Bank's Global Corporate Solutions team. The modules were embedded in Ecuador's approved national technical-education framework rather than run as a parallel system.
Outcomes
An independent randomised evaluation found that students who used the mixed-reality lab learned significantly more than peers taught conventionally, scoring about 0.37 standard deviations higher on a cognitive test of how engines work. Evaluators attributed the gain to higher engagement, motivation and confidence: the interactive, visual format let learners take a motor apart and rebuild it repeatedly without risk to equipment. The programme's lead economist, quoted below, described the labs as a way to expand access to quality practical training while aligning it with workplace needs.
Partners and funding
ACTIVaR was funded by the Korea–World Bank Partnership Facility and delivered with Namseoul University and the Korea University of Technology and Education (KOREATECH), which helped pioneer the simulation-based approach. Korean experts produced a pedagogy manual and ran on-site and virtual coaching to help instructors shift from lecturing to facilitating technology-supported learning.
Scaling
All five institutes continue to use ACTIVaR, and some have adopted simulators as core teaching equipment. Lessons from the programme are informing TVET policy discussions in the Caribbean — feeding into World Bank operations such as the Human Capital Resilience Project and the OECS Skills and Innovation Project — while country teams in Sub-Saharan Africa explore similar virtual labs for welding, auto-mechanics and vehicle operation.
