Robert Mott
Professor
Department of Engineering Technology
University of Dayton
Dayton, Ohio
rmott@udayton.edu
Why use technology?
I decided to incorporate MDSolids™ into my teaching three years ago, after hearing about it on an engineering technology listserv that covers about 2,000 people interested in technology education. The software was still new and being developed--it has matured dramatically since then--but I saw it as a way to enhance my students' learning. These kinds of software are an important aid to the students in doing regular textbook problems and allow the students to do more meaningful projects, such as original design problems, that help them assimilate the material better.
The University of Dayton is a private Catholic University with 10,000 students; 1,200 of them are in the College of
Engineering. The University is pretty far advanced in technology; it recently required that all students have computers--the students acquire the computers through the University, choosing either a lease or payment option. There are two or three hardware configurations the students can get, some of which are desktop. Laptop computers are available at an additional cost--since this has just been instituted in the 1999-2000 academic year, it's only really available for the first-year students. Even before this policy was put into place, a pretty high percentage of our students had computers that were suitable for running MDSolids™. The campus is highly residential, and each residence is configured for network access--this is coming from the central administration, with support from the trustees.
We still use calculators in engineering technology, but there's a strong move underway in the discipline towards computer-assisted analysis--the accreditation standards of the Technology Accreditation Commission, a division of ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology), call for the use of computers in upper-level classes. The commission, which accredits engineering technology programs, is just now implementing a revision in standards that would be parallel to EC 2000. Incorporating computers into the learning process simply makes sense, because computers are thoroughly integrated into the field on a professional level. The students learn what working engineers practice every day.
The strategy
We think it's important for students to learn the fundamentals of the subject matter and the way to approach the problems in the course itself, in the basic classroom experience, but then to be open to using computer-assisted design and analysis. So we often will give students what amounts to projects or assignments that they need to do on the computer. We sometimes use AutoCAD, we have computer programming languages such as BASIC or C++, and we use commercially available software like MDSolids™. We also have them doing analysis, using a spreadsheet like the Microsoft Excel™ package.
My philosophy toward the use of software is that students should learn the basic techniques themselves by hand and by doing calculations. But once they've done that, they can move into software, either some that they write themselves or commercial software like MDSolids™--this allows them to do many more, and typically more complex, problems in a given amount of time. The software is a tool that I think they learn how to use effectively while they're students and that they can take with them into the professional world.
I've never met Professor Philpott, the creator of MDSolids™, but I've communicated with him through e-mails. A colleague here arranged for MDSolids™ to be installed on our central software engineering network, but I don't know what protocol or payment was used for that. The students have the option of using it on our system or downloading it off the web. When they download it, they can use it for 30 days; then they need to pay a nominal fee.
MDSolids™ is used as a supplement to the regular classroom material. I present the subject in a more traditional fashion, but I have a computer in the classroom and show them how the software works. I use MDSolids™ to show the students that they can be much more productive and accurate--it speeds up the design and analysis, and it enables students to cover many design cases. It lets the students focus on the design, not the calculations, and provides good visuals, which gives the students the ability to do original design problems.
The course
I use MDSolids™ in four classes that I teach. Typically students learn computer programming and computer-aided design in their first year. They take the courses I teach in their second, third, and fourth years. Statics and Dynamics (60 students per year) is typically a first-semester sophomore course; it's a prerequisite to Strength of Materials. Strength of Materials (45 students per year) is in the second semester of the sophomore year, Design of Machine Elements (45 students per year) follows that in the first semester of the junior year. And Mechanical Design (45 students per year) is a capstone course in the senior year. Using MDSolids™ in Mechanical Design depends somewhat on whether the product the students are designing would lend itself to that particular analysis. It may or may not--Mechanical Design is a project-oriented course and it depends on the project.
The learning technology
MDSolids: Educational Software for Mechanics of Materials: MDSolids™ focuses primarily on the subjects of "strength of materials" and "engineering design." Using what it calls "educational routines," it approaches the subject with the hypothesis that students most want--and will pay most attention to--an application that helps them solve the homework problems they are assigned. By doing just that, MDSolids™ helps develop students' problem-solving skills. And the visual interface--not so much animation as very good graphics--allows users to develop an intuitive understanding of the concepts.
The topics covered by the routines include: beams, trusses, columns, flexure, statically indeterminate structures, and Mohr's circle analysis, including stress and strain transformations, and more. The software groups the routines into modules very much like textbook chapters; I think at this point the primary market for MDSolids™ is education, but I see no reason why it couldn't be used professionally.
MDSolids™ does all the calculations for the user, giving prompts for entering the data. In Statics and Dynamics, for example, one software module I used was for designing a truss. The students can make some changes in the design and see how it affects the force distribution--and they can do that very, very quickly. If they were to do a truss of even moderate size and scope by hand, solving all the forces would probably take them a half hour. With MDSolids™, they can do it in three minutes.
For the instructor, the software is very easy to use; the guides that it gives are very clear. An instructor who really knows the subject matter should be able to pick up these kinds of programs and use them. I would just emphasize that you can't simply dump students into a program unless they understand what the program is doing. Every time we use MDSolids™, we do something new and work it out in class, to make sure they understand the principles of the software program; then I assign them to the computer.
MDSolids™ is Windows-based and can be downloaded from its website.
HYDROFLO™ and PumpBase: I'm also the author of three textbooks: Applied Strength of Materials, third edition (Prentice Hall, 1996); Machine Elements in Mechanical Design, third edition (Prentice Hall, 1999); and Applied Mechanics, fifth edition (Prentice Hall, 2000). Along with the third text, Applied Mechanics, we have software, called HYDROFLO, provided to the instructors as part of the solutions; it was just released in November 1999, and the department is using it in our classes right now. It's a combination of software that I wrote myself and software designed by another person for a California company called Tahoe Designed Software. There's a companion piece of software on the same CD-ROM, called PumpBase, that provides literally hundreds of performance curves for pumps. So if we do assign a design project in which students have to pick a pump, it gives them many, many possible pumps to choose from.
The results
I'm very pleased with MDSolids™, and the students were universally impressed with the software. They did agree that it helped them understand the kinds of problems they were working and that it was a useful tool. In general, the students do appreciate the design experiences they get. They also consider them very challenging because many of the students are used to learning in a way that just requires them to know the equations. It's challenging, but feedback last year when I did this was very positive. The quality of the students' work has improved, and it's clearly a skill the students can benefit from.
If you have any questions, you can contact me at:
rmott@udayton.edu
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