Practical applications-based multimedia modules for engineering education

A common difficulty with teaching engineering courses is the incorporation of practical applications to help students understand the relevance and importance of the presented course material and its use in solving practical engineering problems. This relates to a general concern that education in the United States is not sufficiently process-oriented, and that graduates are not prepared to solve problems in a workplace. The authors present several multimedia tutorials designed by the CAEME Center at the University of Utah which use applications and interactive experimental procedures for teaching engineering courses. The multimedia modules provide students with opportunities to conduct virtual laboratories and make observations that often lead to the derivation of mathematical equations. These tutorials employ applications in two different teaching strategies. In the first, applications are used as a concrete means of demonstrating the material being taught; while the other is in the conflict/resolution category, in which the student is given a design problem and must learn and apply engineering concepts and problem-solving techniques to arrive at a solution. These, as well as other features of the developed engineering applications-oriented multimedia lessons, are described and demonstrated.