Design Team Member: Bruce Cavers
Supervisor: Prof. Barry Wills
Background
Web-based education/training is a rapid-evolving area of internet technologies, with over 500 products, systems and new service offerings now on the market, and a forecasted $6 billion market for these technologies by the year 2002. Educational institutions across North America are realizing substantial benefits from implementing web-based learning solutions. By presenting elements of a course’s curriculum in a web format, students are able to access materials at any time, and additionally, interactivity and other multimedia functionality can be used to enhance the material and create a more effective learning environment. The supervisor for this workshop, Prof. Barry Wills, has identified a need for a web-based initiative in the instruction of SY DE 161: Introduction to Systems Design Engineering. It is anticipated that this initiative will enhance the teaching of this course, and influence other members of the Systems Design faculty to incorporate web-based initiatives into other courses within the SY DE curriculum.
Project description
The goal of this workshop is to design and develop a web-based education solution to be implemented for use in the instruction of SY DE 161: Introduction to Systems Design Engineering. There are 2 main sub-projects involved. Firstly, identifying the aspects of SY DE 161 that are best-suited to an online implementation. The second sub-project is the design and development of the solution. In many cases, animation and interactivity will be used in order to represent dynamic systems concepts. Several tools promoting collaborative group learning will also be key components of the solution.
Design methodology
The solution will be comprised of 4 main areas: lecture-related materials, general resources, project-related resources, and group-related components. Three systems design concepts that are currently taught in SY DE 161 have been selected for develop as web-based applications/tools: "Systems Glasses", "The 3-Bubble Simulation Approach", and a historical engineering timeline. Key criteria and constraints for this project include:
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The design should act as a Resource Centre and Internet Portal for SY DE 161
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The solution should encourage collaborative learning
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The system should be entertaining and informative
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The tools that are developed should be supplementary and complementary to classroom material in that their use should be encouraged, but should not render in-class teaching any less necessary/valuable - a student should not be able to simply use the web-based tools and skip classes
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Maintenance and/or addition of content must be able to be carried out by any person with a basic knowledge of internet technologies
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The technical requirements for using the tools must be at or below the current level of technologies found on University of Waterloo's Polaris system (so that every student will be ensured access)
In addition to internet standards such as HTML and Javascript, the solution will utilize Macromedia's Shockwave and Flash technologies for web-based interactivity and animation.