Interactive Web-based tutorials for engineering education

The RAISE (Remote Asynchronous Instruction in Science and Engineering) program at the University of Louisville provides online support for classes. One feature of RAISE is the interactive tutorial. Each tutorial is a series of HTML documents that includes JavaScript to allow for response to student input. A typical tutorial poses a problem to the student, then helps the student solve the problem by providing sequentially more specific hints. Student evaluations of the tutorials have been quite favorable. The framework of the tutorial is such that it works well for a wide variety of applications and disciplines. Development of new tutorials is therefore fast and easy, and requires only a rudimentary knowledge of HTML. This paper describes how the tutorial is constructed and how instructors can adapt it to support their classes.