Creating online faculty collaboration to develop engineering education computer learning materials

The expansion of the Internet has introduced new options for developing science, math and engineering classes. Digital libraries such as NEEDS.org provide attractive options for courseware authors to widely distribute their work. NEEDS (National Engineering Education Delivery System) has implemented mechanisms to link multidisciplinary experts in an online community focused on improving the quality of engineering courseware. These collaborative mechanisms are based on interview results from the winners of the annual Premier Award for Excellence in Engineering Education Courseware, presented annually. This project focuses on identifying and describing the needs of courseware authors and evaluating how the NEEDS developments in the faculty community support collaboration.