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Session 3225

Engineering Design – On-Line

Rebecca Sidler Kellogg, Jerald Vogel, Vinay Dayal Iowa State University

Introduction

Transforming engineering curriculum to an on-line asynchronous format presents many challenges and opportunities. Engineering design has typically been taught as a collaborative interactive course at Iowa State University where student involvement and engagement was promoted in face-to-face synchronous learning environments. With the dawn of e-learning, a new opportunity to reach students on-line, faculty at Iowa State University re-examined how engineering design methods and tools might be transformed to the on-line format. On-line learning provides engineers an opportunity to obtain the training they need at the point in projects where they most need it. The power of learning and using information immediately, as it is needed, is a key to the attractiveness of using the Internet as a delivery mode.

Iowa State University has initiated an experimental project with eCollege.com to develop credit and noncredit on-line courses. The Communications and Continuing Education organization and Engineering Distance Education are facilitating the details of the experiment. Two engineering faculty members, a team of graduate students, and specialists in distance education, combined efforts to transform the engineering content and learning from a traditional on-site learning environment to a web-based environment.

As part of this experiment, two of the modules from the design sequence in the Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics program were converted to web-based delivery. Modules entitled ‘Design Modeling with Parameterization for Optimization’, and ‘Finite Element Analysis for Practicing Engineers’, were selected since they are both important topics for practicing engineers in industry and popular with the students.

Re-thinking the Content for the On-line Environment

The goals for the project were carefully developed prior to delving into the details of the work. The instructors examined the content and reflected on their experiences, both in the academic environment as well as their participation on projects with industry partners. The following list defines the goals outlines by the faculty for the creation of the modules in the on-line environment. • Each module should be designed to reflect industry needs. • The project should result in the development of shared engineering course development tools, templates, and resources so that other instructors can easily transform content into on-line environments appropriate for the engineering discipline without the steep learning curve associated with beginning a new course.

Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2001, American Society for Engineering Education

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Dayal, V., & Vogel, J., & Sidler Kellogg, R. (2001, June), Engineering Design – On Line Paper presented at 2001 Annual Conference, Albuquerque, New Mexico. 10.18260/1-2--9186