Active Learning Enabled by Information Technology
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Prof. Dava Newman - Dept. of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering
(A/A)MIT's Department of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering is in the midst of a fundamental, large-scale overhaul of its educational program, which touches almost every subject in the Department. Called CDIO this eight-year effort emphasizes that engineers must become skilled at conceiving, designing, integrating, and operating complex value-added engineering systems in team-based environments.
CDIO goes beyond just curriculum revision. It entails a transformation from an educational outlook that has been organized around engineering science, to a program that more fully embraces the engineering culture, including active experimentation, group learning, and rich student projects, complemented by internships in industry, set both in classrooms and learning laboratories that are networked to the outside world.
The part of this effort being carried out under iCampus sponsorship focuses on active learning, and is being done in collaboration with faculty in the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Faculty in both departments face similar challenges in encouraging students to take active roles in mastering complex engineering design, from teaching them to build aircraft and space vehicles, to helping them analyze the myriad of forces that act on beams supporting buildings and bridges. Professors Newman and Einstein and their colleagues are focusing their energy in two main areas: learning through the use of computerized modules and simulations, and collaboration in engineering design.
Faculty in A/A courses throughout the curriculum are building upon Microsoft's Flight Simulator environment, developing add-ons intended to give students their own virtual aircraft and see how their design and modification ideas will affect flight performance. For example, modified gauges provide a moving target for students to track, and a second altitude needle, which oscillates at a specified frequency, helps measure, pilot response and pilot-in-the-loop transfer functions. In the Air Traffic Control Subject, students have worked online with the virtual air traffic control community to simulate flying a Boeing 777 from Boston's Logan Airport to New York JFK, using full air traffic control procedures.
Simulation and active learning also play a large role in Prof. Newman's freshman subject "Introduction to Aerospace Engineering and Design", which features a major project where student teams design, build, and fly, and race radio-controlled lighter-than-air vehicles.
In CEE, faculty are developing on-line modules that combine text, schematic figures, photographs, and simulations in the areas of solid mechanics and structural design. The modules introduce students to relevant principles, and then allow them to apply these principles in designing and analyzing structures through interactive simulations. Students manipulate the controls themselves to further explore the material. The group is also developing intelligent tutoring environments as tools to support active learning of the structural behavior of mechanical systems. These tools students answer questions as they move through the modules and receive feedback on the accuracy of their answer. This can also be used to help instructors see where students are struggling to understanding the material.
Active LearningAs part of their focus on integrating distance collaboration into design courses, the A/A faculty has undertaken an exhaustive review of software packages that promise to do just that. Many of the packages currently available are designed to meet the needs of distance collaboration in business and don't address the requirements of educators and students. Similarly, CEE faculty are developing surveys and journaling tools to investigate students' ability to work effectively in teams on collaborative engineering design projects. The tools allow team members to see what others are doing, to share their work, and to exchange feedback in real-time. Assessment of the students performance, both individually and as a team, is considered vital and is being built into the collaborative environment. And in A/A, the department is beginning to personal design portfolios as a central tool for assessing student performance.
Faculty are also transforming lectures to incorporate new techniques for active learning. A/A's Unified Engineering subject is experimenting with a Response Response Systems, where lecturers pose questions to the class and students "buzz-in" their answers using remote control-like devices. The results are instantly tabulated and displayed on a projection screen, so both the instructor and the class can see if everyone is following along, or if the lecturer needs to to go back over the presented material.
