Discuss the Multimedia for Engineering Education Project Here

Kurt Gramoll has been a pioneer in the use of multimedia in engineering education. He and his students (and employees) have put enormous effort into creating a variety of tools for use in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and other areas. In this brief essay, we expand on the issues from the Criteria Index.

Domains/Units

Kurt has focused on topics in Aerospace Engineering (his field of expertise) that also relate to other areas of engineering, such as vibrations, dynamics, statics, and finite element analysis. But he's also worked on things that are clearly "rocket science". A good example of the latter is his CD based Interactive Multimedia Program for the Mars Pathfinder Mission.

Learning Problems

Kurt recognized that students found it difficult to visualize some of the more difficult concepts in engineering education, and to see how they relate. He believed that visual representation of complex concepts and interaction with key system parameters allows for a deeper understanding of a problem. By using his programs in conjunction with the theory that is learned in the classroom, the students can gain further insight and augment their understanding of the subject.

He tried to provide for what-if design scenarios and experimentation, which are important in engineering practice and also support learning. The students could use the program at their own pace with lots of feedback in response to student actions.

Kinds of Technology

For the most part, Kurt used CD-ROM-based software. The reason was that he was mostly producing simulations and multimedia presentations that involved huge digital objects, such as large movies and sounds. Putting these on the Web or on a server would have created enormous download times for students.

Another factor driving this choice was that he wanted to be able to distribute his work widely. He gave away copies of his Mars Pathfinder CD to schools all over the country. He distributed his dynamics and statics CDs through Addison-Wesley Interactive (http://aw.com/awi.html), which distributes in a CD format mostly. A CD format is easiest to hand to someone without assuming a network connection.

Development

The Mars Pathfinder Mission CD, Dynamics, Statics, GT-VIBS, and all of the other projects developed in Kurt's lab were done with Macromedia Director. Director gave Kurt the ability to manipulate a wide variety of media, and the result would run on Windows or Macintosh computers. There were several disadvantages to Director that Kurt noted, though:

• Complex interactions (text areas, sliders, manipulating figures) were very difficult to implement.
• Director is not strong in mathematics, which made it difficult for him to do the calculations underlying his simulations.
• Director files are huge, which really limited him to CD-based delivery

In the future, Kurt has talked about using Macromedia Flash, which is more oriented toward Web-based delivery, but doesn't really solve the interactions and mathematics problems.

Integration

CD-based software of this type is pretty easy to integrate into a class because it doesn't really impact assignments or lecture. While it can be useful in lectures, the software does not replace lecture. The software doesn't really produce projects or artifacts that could be handed in as assignments.

The best role for software of this kind is for self-study and for lab activities. It excels at providing students self-paced activities that they can use to help understand complex concepts. The issue of how to get students to be thoughtful and to try to understand the simulations (as opposed to simply treating them as a videogame) is there. Probably the best way to use these tools would be in conjunction with lecture and discussion, actively pointing out the reasoning behind the simulation's behavior.

Evaluation

One of Kurt's tools, GT-VIBS, was evaluated by Cindy Hmelo of EduTech. The full paper of that evaluation is at http://www.cc.gatech.edu/fac/mark.guzdial/cases/gramolleval.html, but is summarized here.

GT-VIBS is a set of multimedia (MM) tutorial modules that are designed to teach engineering vibrations through the use of simulation and visualization. The modules are tutorials which use animations to illustrate concepts and equations. The tutorial contains animations both of mechanical systems and also graphs of their motion, allowing the learner to use multiple representations of the same physical phenomena.

The screen is composed of 3 panes. The panes on the left provide the visualizations, for example, a pendulum on top and a graph of its movement on the bottom. On the right, there are text and equations. For example, there might be definition of Harmonic Motion and several equations that describe harmonic systems.

On some screens there is a button that allows the learner to jump into a simulation, manipulate parameters, and compare the effects of changing different parameters. In addition, these multimedia modules can be placed in the context of a case study by using a simulated laboratory approach. In the case study, the learner enters a simulated laboratory. The simulated laboratory contains a bookshelf from which the MM modules can be accessed, a file cabinet that contains specifications, and a computer for doing computations. For example, the case that used for the evaluation study involved designing shock absorbers for motorcycle motion over a bumpy terrain. There is good evidence in the cognitive science and educational research literature that contextualized learning helps the students learn not only scientific principles, but when those principles are applicable.

The evaluation began with a set of predictions. The case study (CS) embeds the multimedia tutorials (MM) in a problem solving context, thus enhancing student learning and subsequent transfer addition, the use of visualization and simulation supports the development of qualitative understanding. This occurs because these multimedia modalities allow the learners to experiment and receive comparative feedback. We predict that students who use the software would develop a better qualitative understanding as measured by the conceptual definitions that they were asked to provide as well as understanding why these concepts are relevant than students learning from text.

In the study, the evaluators compared 3 groups of students. Those students who learned from multimedia were compared with students who used the case study prior to a multimedia module, and with students who learned from text. Students were measured on usability and learning.

In general, the students' ratings were most positive about the multimedia tutorials and least positive toward the text, with the case study in the middle. Moreover, they preferred the MMs to the CS which surprised us because we had assumed that the context provided by the case would help make the concepts more interesting and more concrete.

For the elementary vibrations, all three groups learned the definitions (pretest mean: 3.66, standard deviation (SD) 1.73; posttest mean 5.16, SD 1.73; p<.001) but there were no differences between the three groups. The students in the two computer conditions learned more about the importance of the concepts than the students in the text condition (p<.08). In addition, the MM students condition learned more than the CS students (p<.05). For the use of examples, all the students learned from pretest to posttest (pretest mean 2.97, SD 1.94; posttest mean: 4.94, SD 1.97; p<.001) but there were no differences among the MM, CS, and Text students. --- ***For More Information