Several factors have combined in recent years to increase the use of educational technology in engineering education. First is the increased availability and lower costs of the technologies themselves, from videotape to personal computers to television broadcasting via satellite. Larger class sizes and a growing demand for specialized courses for off-site students are also factors. Accompanying the growing demand is a scarcity of faculty to teach these courses (particularly undergraduate courses.)

For ERCs, the existence of nearly identical courses at affiliated universities and the need to provide instruction to industrial affiliates and ERC students on multiple campuses provide incentives to reach remote locations. As a result, the ERCs have pioneered the development and use of innovative educational technologies.

4.7.1 Remote Instructional Delivery via Television

Live television broadcasting of courses can be a daunting challenge. The technical systems are complex; it is difficult to establish natural communication and feedback from a remote site; the professor must perform on-camera; and start-up and operating costs are relatively high. Some ERCs have found it hard to get students involved in distance learning courses. Experienced faculty and staff members stress the need to deal with technical difficulties early, because once the TV link gets a bad reputation, it is hard to overcome. Many ERCs offer distance learning courses through their institutions' central "distance learning" or "outreach" program offices, to help minimize such problems.

Some ERC universities uplink courses via satellite as part of the National Technological University (NTU). NTU was founded in 1984 as an accredited "virtual" university, to deliver academic courses via a dedicated satellite network directly to industry training facilities. More than 15 ERC institutions are NTU university partners.

Many university outreach programs use videoconferencing to bring the live classroom experience to distance participants. Outreach offices may offer a videoconferencing option for distance learningcourses, depending on the particular course, core audience, and enrollment. The Center for Power Electronics Systems (CPES), a five-university ERC, uses videoconferencing to support a team-taught survey course involving faculty and students from all five campuses. In this model, lectures are videotaped for asynchronous delivery, while discussion sessions are delivered by videoconference.

A number of the ERCs use videotape recording to capture some TV-taught courses, seminars, and/or industry presentations for later viewing by students and/or industry at remote locations. If appropriate recording equipment is available, this approach has proven an excellent way to broaden the dissemination of ERC instructional materials.

4.7.2 Computer-Based Instruction

Students of all ages are comfortable using computer-based instructional software. These tools can range from sophisticated interactive simulations to simple tutorial text files that can be used inside or outside the classroom. Several ERCs are also producing CD ROMs and/or providing web access to computer-based educational modules, workshop presentations, conference presentations, educational games, and other materials.

4.7.2.1 Computer Simulations

Some ERCs are using their expertise in programming and software development to push the state of the art in the use of computers in instruction and visualization. The Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) sponsored the development and application of OpenSees (http://opensees.berkeley.edu/), a software framework for developing applications to simulate the performance of structural and geotechnical systems subjected to earthquakes. The goal is to improve modeling and computational simulation in earthquake engineering through open-source development.

PEER has a software site for downloading freeware software and links to commercial software. Dr. Layer-a computer program designed to illustrate the behavior of shear waves in layered media-provides an interactive environment for analyzing and visualizing the propagation of one-dimensional shear waves in linear and nonlinear layered soil masses. Although simple to use, it provides quite general modeling and visualization capabilities. In addition to Dr. Layer, this site contains a full set of exercises and tutorial materials for learning about wave propagation. These materials are structured around Dr. Layer, and are set up to encourage self-study and hands-on exploration. The target audience for these materials is senior undergraduate or graduate-level students interested in studying wave propagation in soil and rock masses, but many of the phenomena and concepts presented are applicable to wave propagation in general.

USC_RC (University of Southern California-Reinforced Concrete) was developed as a tool to address the analytical needs of research on the seismic behavior of bridge piers under various loading patterns (through an NSF-funded research program at PEER). It can handle two different systems, four major cross-sections, different steel properties, unconfined and confined concrete, and monotonic or hysteretic stress-strain relationships.

4.7.2.2 CD-ROMs and Downloadable Computer-Based Educational Materials

The Mid-America Earthquake Center (MAEC) has developed a CD-ROM series based on earthquake-related technical reports and workshops. The audience is mainly graduate students and earthquake researchers. The center released six in this series in 2000 and seven in 2001. The MAEC has also produced instructional materials at several different levels, including:.

• ED-7-Teaching modules for nontechnical majors
  
• ED-8-Teaching modules for graduate education
  
• ED-9-Instructional earthquake simulations
  
• ED-5-Virtual learning center (VLC)
  
• ED-4-Innovative undergraduate teaching methods
  
• ED-2-K-12 instruction materials.

The Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research provides several educational resources that can be downloaded from their website, including "Making a Shake Table," "Soil and Earthquakes," and "Designing Structures to Perform Well During an Earthquake." They also provide fact sheets of general interest, such as "Be an Earthquake Detective," "Designing Structures for Earthquake Performance," "Earthquakes and Careers," and "Earthquakes in Eastern North America during 1976-1996." This center also maintains a "Frequently Asked Questions" area, for elementary and middle school children.

Some of the ERC faculty at the ERC for Reconfigurable Machining Systems have developed interactive multimedia education modules in manufacturing and related areas, which are currently accessible through the worldwide web. By the end of year 4, the ERC website will provide links to these modules. They plan to extend their offerings to include interactive software designed for graduate, undergraduate, vocational/community college, and high and middle school students. Tutorials will be developed to help students understand how analysis of a system may be done from a variety of perspectives and a number of levels of abstraction, all of which produce "right" answers. The manufacturing community, and the public as a whole, will be informed of the availability of the modules on the web through conference presentations, demonstrations, workshops, and other means.

The ERC for Environmentally Benign Semiconductor Manufacturing has developed materials, available on its website, that focus on basic semiconductor manufacturing processes and their associated environmental impacts and are available to center members and affiliates. The class materials consist of PowerPoint lecture slides, reading materials, exercises, and references. They are aimed at upper-level undergraduate and graduate students. This center also used a high school student to develop a math/chemistry computer module for high school students. Several of the teachers at the University of Arizona teacher institute worked with this student in 1999. The module contains a schematic of an ultrapure water system. The student can click on any of the unit operations and learn how they work. Some are animated. In addition, the student is asked to solve a basic algebra problem. This module was disseminated to teachers at the 2000 and 2001 conferences for use in their courses. The center expects to have it available on its website or to distribute it as a CD ROM.

The Engineering Research Center for Particle Science and Technology is committed to producing and disseminating teaching materials that are accessible to all learners. The ERC Instructional Module Series continues to produce teaching materials in modular format, aimed at a variety of instructional levels. Several modules are currently available, including an introduction to chemicals used in particle systems, principles of size reduction of particles by mechanical means, techniques in rheological measurements, solid-solid separation of fine particles by froth flotation, and separation by physical means. Several other modules are under development.

4.7.3 Use of the Internet for Instruction and Dissemination

The internet is rapidly becoming one of the most popular delivery systems for instruction and dissemination of educational programs. It has several advantages. It provides universal access to highly interactive educational materials for students, whether they are sitting in the same classroom as the instructor or halfway across the world. Access is virtually instantaneous and can be restricted to authorized personnel by implementing a number of effective security systems. Probably the most attractive feature of internet-based educational systems is that materials can be easily and quickly updated or upgraded. This fact is extremely important in science and engineering, where rapid change is the norm. While other delivery systems, such as live broadcasts, videotapes, and books, represent the state of knowledge at the time those materials were developed, a well-maintained website reflects the current state of knowledge in a particular area. Many ERCs are developing web-based educational materials, and one is developing authoring tools and management tools to assist with module development, course management, and delivery.

4.7.3.1 Web-based Education Delivery Systems

The Vanderbilt Northwestern Texas Harvard/MIT ERC in Bioengineering Education Technologies (VaNTH) is creating a web-based system for developing and delivering educational materials (http://www.isis.vanderbilt.edu/projects/VaNTH/index.htm). The system's architecture is shown in Figure 2. It consists of two platforms: eLCMS, (experimental Learning Content Management System) and elms (experimental Learning Management System). These components are modeled on commercial platforms that are beginning to appear in the marketplace. Standards are being developed by government and industry-such as the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative's Shareable Courseware Object Reference Model (SCORM)- to shape the ways learning systems interoperate. VaNTH will employ these standards to enable its educational materials to be used with compliant commercial products. At present, however, these standards are immature, are focused strongly on asynchronous delivery (i.e., distance learning), and are just beginning to transcend the computer-based training (CBT) instructional styles of the past. VaNTH is pioneering extensions of those standards that will support "blended instruction" (the synergistic combination of asynchronous and synchronous learning activities) and more innovative instructional designs motivated by developments in learning science. Given the exploratory status of these extensions, VaNTH has designated its platforms as experimental, denoted by "e".

The eLCMS platform supports the development of educational materials. A key VaNTH innovation in this platform is the Courseware Authoring and Packaging Environment (CAPE). Using CAPE, courseware authors design the delivery of courseware materials (including adaptive delivery and synchronization for blended instruction), define learning objectives and associate them with curricular and domain taxonomies, and supply other metadata required to support courseware delivery.

Figure 2. VaNTH System Architecture

The design of CAPE reflects a fundamental change underway in the larger courseware development community: the move away from monolithic, special-purpose instructional artifacts toward modular, reusable materials, in which designs describe how the materials are used to achieve particular learning objectives. CAPE employs a graphical modeling approach to this integration task, and it provides many novel capabilities in bringing to bear materials and assets from all VaNTH thrust areas. Authors can begin their task using instructional design patterns inspired by the work of VaNTH's Learning Science Thrust. These patterns, such as the Legacy Pattern that supports challenge-based instruction, communicate the form of instructional designs and can constrain choices of assessment approaches and provide consistent sets of metadata. Authors can integrate assessment items from "item banks" and use these items diagnostically in adaptive delivery strategies. Domain taxonomies are provided as metadata tagging resources, one of many types supported, and concepts from these taxonomies can be associated with learning objectives for modules and higher-level integrations. Delivery previewing allows authors to obtain feedback on their work without leaving the authoring environment.

Content authoring tools, both commercial and VaNTH-specific, will be used to construct the learning materials that support pattern-based instructional designs described in CAPE. The VaNTH repository provides persistence services for the eLCMS platform, and the CAPE authoring environment will interoperate with the repository to facilitate the use and reuse of its contents. Work flow management and metadata-based search and retrieval complement the persistence and authoring services of the platform.

The eLMS platform supports experimentation with asynchronously delivered VaNTH courseware and "blended instruction." The administrative functionality of this platform is sufficient to support trial offerings of new courseware with small groups of learners. Extensive instrumentation and unsolicited feedback facilities underscore this platform's use in experimentation. The component-based delivery engine of eLMS supports delivery templates that are the counterparts of instructional design patterns within the CAPE authoring environment. Discussion forums, mediated and unmediated, facilitate collaboration among learners, and individual learners can construct private notes as a complement to the delivery record shared between the learner and instructor. Exploring the effective use of these capabilities is part of the experimentation enabled by eLMS.

The eLMS supports advanced author, instructor, and learner services. For authors, it supports uploading courseware to the platform with version management. Instructors can organize classes, build rosters, assign courseware, mediate discussion forums, and review learner delivery records and unsolicited feedback. Learners can suspend and resume courseware delivery across multiple browser sessions, can review items from their courseware delivery records, and can compose and review items from a notebook of private notes associated with courseware and classes.

The eLMS delivery engine uses the courseware models composed in the CAPE authoring environment as instructions for delivering courseware. The engine is extensible with particular delivery semantics and complementary user interface accessories specific to a CAPE instructional design pattern
.
4.7.3.2 Web-Based Education Materials

VaNTH is developing web-based education materials for undergraduate bioengineering courses in the areas of biomechanics, biotechnology, biomedical optics, systems physiology, and other areas of bioengineering. These materials are based on the "How People Learn" (HPL) framework (http://books.nap.edu/catalog/9853.html), and many of the modules that have been developed follow a particular implementation of HPL known as the STAR Legacy cycle (http://www.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/ctrs/ltc/brophys/legacy1.html). Although many of these materials are initially developed for use in class, they can be easily imported into CAPE and delivered over the worldwide web.

The Georgia Tech/Emory Center for the Engineering of Living Tissues has developed interactive web modules for middle and high school students and their parents and teachers. GTEC has also developed a module on receptor/ligand interactions. Prosthetic Pete is being developed into a teaching module, which will include interviews with bioengineering graduate students so K-12 students can learn about various paths taken to college and research. Other engineering and science topics will be developed in a similar teaching module format. With new educational technologies appearing constantly, GTEC is working with the Center for Distance Learning and the Interactive Media Technology Center at Georgia Tech to develop a graduate tissue engineering course in a format that can be delivered effectively over the internet. The target audience will be graduate students at other universities and people working in the tissue engineering industry.

The Center for Engineered Biomaterials at the University of Washington (UWEB) is developing a number of online courses. The center plans to videotape selected courses taught by UWEB investigators and place them on the web for wide distribution. This will be the initial step toward providing a distance learning component to UWEB education, making it easily accessible to industry partners, other ERCs, and interested individuals and groups nationally and internationally. The center also has placed online an interactive bioengineering game, "Guy Simplant," that provides an educational component as students help Guy rebuild his injured body parts, and has made CD-ROMs available for wide distribution.

The ERC for Particle Science and Technology has developed a web-based course designed to ensure that undergraduate students receive an adequate introduction to the fundamentals before conducting research. This 10-hour web-based tutorial was developed from the ERC instructional modules and other materials. The module is being formatively evaluated and will be fully implemented in the spring. The center is also preparing to offer its first international internet-based course this fall. Dr. Brian Scarlett will teach "Particle Technology: Principles and Design," which will be offered synchronously to students at the University of Florida and the University of Delft, the Netherlands. In the past year the ERC has explored various options for meeting industrial and academic needs for instructional materials, to help set priorities for efforts in these areas. The center has decided to supplement the printed instructional module series by developing a web-based e-module series, which will provide single topic materials by experts in the field but will take advantage of new delivery technologies by providing these on the web. The ERC will work with the college of engineering's distance learning department to pilot two modules this fall. In the spring, phase two of the project will take advantage of the 2002 session of the center's Particle Science Summer School in Winter (described in sections 4.3 and 4.5) to produce additional modules, taught by experts who will be on campus for the program.

At the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center, Dr. Stephen A. Mahin has developed an interactive online course that integrates information from various engineering and scientific disciplines to provide a rational basis for the design of earthquake-resistant structures. The course touches on engineering seismology, geotechnical engineering, economics, risk and reliability theory, and architecture in addition to dynamics and the analysis and design of structures. The focus of the course is on buildings, bridges, industrial facilities, and other kinds of structures that may, in a major earthquake, be allowed to respond in the inelastic range. The course emphasizes a theoretical understanding of the fundamental factors influencing and controlling the response of these structures and on the developments of effective, but simplified, design procedures able to achieve specified performance goals.

The Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research provides two interactive web-based instructional modules, jointly developed with The Notre Dame Virtual Laboratory for Earthquake Engineering (http://www.nd.edu/~quake/java/). The modules provide an interactive framework for students and practitioners to gain fundamental understanding and intuition of a range of topics in earthquake engineering. Two virtual experiments are available: "Structural Control using TMDs and AMDs," (which allows students to compare the effect of using two different control systems for reducing the structural response of an "uncontrolled" structure subjected to earthquake excitation) and "Base Isolation" (which allows students to study the effectiveness of base isolation for reducing the seismic demands on a structure).

UWEB has established an online journal for publishing undergraduate research. The Journal of Undergraduate Research in Bioengineering (JURIBE) showcases research results of undergraduate bioengineering students. Articles are intended to document research accomplishments to date; that is, publication does not require completed research projects.

4.7.4 Conventional Publication Media

Most ERCs distribute research reports and articles as part of their industrial programs, and many distribute final theses. Industrial workshops and annual industry meetings are used as forums for demonstrating new research and technological breakthroughs and software developments. Quarterly or biennial newsletters are the most common mechanism for publicizing ERC accomplishments. They feature both achievements in research and technology and educational innovations and programs.

The Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC) has a contract with Prentice-Hall for the IMSC Press, a book series carrying the IMSC and Prentice-Hall logos. The series has an outside editor-in-chief, who in turn has an editorial board. This is an effective means of disseminating research results so that they will have wider educational impact than journal articles alone. The Center for Power Electronics Systems publishes a series of research reference volumes, each devoted to a specific area of power electronics research.

Similarly, textbooks by ERC authors are being developed; and a number have been completed and are on the market, both as reference books and textbooks. .

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