Engaging Students with "What if?" Scenarios Using MDSolids and Visual Mechanics

Manoochehr Zoghi
Associate Professor
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering Mechanics
University of Dayton
Dayton, Ohio
mzoghi@engr.udayton.edu

Why use technology?
I try to use learning technology whenever I can in my courses--before I began using it, we were spending way too much time on tedious calculations. We could not do as many case studies as we wanted. Moreover, we didn't have a pictorial view of the concepts. Learning technology can help solve these problems, but it has to be the right software.

I was teaching a Strength of Materials class and the textbook I was using provided a software package that was not user friendly: it wasn't very interactive, it didn't address all the parameters in a problem, and the program often halted because it had errors in it. So I looked around and a colleague of mine recommended MDSolids®--some faculty had been using it for the past couple of years, and fortunately the software was loaded on our machines in the PC labs.

MDSolids® Visual Mechanics College of Engineering University of Dayton

I found MDSolids® to be very user friendly and interactive, and I use it as much as I can in my classes--my feeling is that students learn a lot if they look at "what if?" scenarios, and MDSolids® works very well with that. When we cover the concepts, the students do longhand calculations; everything is developed in a manual procedure. However, once they get the concept, then they can look at the different configurations, different loading applications, different geometry, and develop an intuition for what's going on. They won't be getting textbook problems when they get out into the professional world, and we cannot afford to go to a laboratory and test different materials, so the next best thing is to do it on the computer.

The University of Dayton is a private Catholic university that enrolls 10,000 students, and 1,200 of those are in the College of Engineering. Both the administration and the faculty here are very encouraging and the culture is very positive in terms of technology use.

The strategy
I attempt to use appropriate software packages in my courses; if there are any commercial software packages available, that's fine. I switched to MDSolids® in mid-semester--the students were having a lot of trouble with the problem software, but when we started with MDSolids®, they were a lot more comfortable, and I got a lot of positive feedback. I simply assigned problems, specific problems that they had to do longhand, and then I asked them to look at varying the different parameters with each problem, creating different "what if" scenarios, using the software.

If there isn't an appropriate software program available for a specific course, then I ask the students to write simple spreadsheet templates, programming different equations or different concepts so they can then implement these "What if?" scenarios.

In all my courses, in addition to integrating the learning technology, I have the students do a major project. For Strength of Materials, I assigned a semester-long project in which they were to investigate as a group a major collapse or a previous disaster, such as the space shuttle or a bridge collapse, and look at it from different perspectives: why the structure failed, what were the shortcomings, and were there any unethical practices involved? That's how you learn, from the previous failures. It was a semester-long project, and they had to draft a report and make an oral presentation. One of the comments the students made about this project was that they wished we had done the project early on in the semester, so they could study harder! They found out that just making a small error could cause a big disaster. They realized they have to study harder and be much more conscientious of the work they do.

The students worked in groups of four or five; one person would be the group leader, responsible for getting everybody together and communicating directly with me. I would e-mail them memos and guide them through the project. We would meet occasionally, once a week or so, to discuss their progress and they would make a dry-run presentation to me and then they would prepare either a PowerPoint® or some sort of slide presentation to the class of what they had learned in the project. They had to make sure the presentation related to the things they had learned in the course and link the course to the real world situation.

The other course in which I've used learning technology is Statics, for which I had to use another software (see below). In Statics, I asked them to design a bridge, to build the bridge, to prepare a technical report of their work, and then make an oral presentation. My colleagues said, "There's no way you can even get through half of this," but I pulled it off and the students just loved it. These kinds of things put the course in perspective and relate it to real-life situations.

The courses
The Strength of Materials course was a sophomore/junior level course, serving about 30 students. The other course, Statics, had 25 students and is a prerequisite to Strength of Materials. It's mainly for sophomores.

The learning technology
MDSolids: Educational Software for Mechanics of Materials: MDSolids® was developed by Professor Timothy A. Philpot (philpott@umr.edu) at the University of Missouri - Rolla; I find it to be very user friendly, with excellent tutorials. 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. The software's ability to provide visualization is its major strength--it 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, and the modules are very conducive to interactive. The software is available for downloading from the Web, and now it's also offered in place of the previous software with the latest edition of that textbook I mentioned: Mechanics of Materials, 2^nd Edition, by Roy R. Craig, Jr. (Wiley).

Visual Mechanics: For the Statics course I taught, MDSolids® didn't apply, so I used Visual Mechanics, which is a CD-ROM that can be ordered to accompany Engineering Mechanics Statics, 8^th edition, by R.C. Hibbler (Prentice Hall, 1998). This software was not as versatile as MDSolids® it offered a group of example problems that already existed in the textbook. But I also assigned "What if?" scenarios for this course--what if you change the parameters within those example problems, what would be the end result? I would assign those problems occasionally, and I would ask them to write a couple of paragraphs discussing what they had learned from changing those parameters.

The results
Using learning technology puts the coursework into perspective for the students, relating homework to actual work that engineers do, and the students get excited about it. That's the main thing: if the students get excited, they will pursue it themselves. You don't have to push them so much. The students have much more enthusiasm about the subject, and they have more confidence about their work. I've also found some improvement in their performance on quizzes.

I would recommend to faculty that they try it out--there's nothing to lose. Try it with a couple of different problems and get feedback form the students to find out how it's panning out. Normally, I don't wait until the end of the semester to get feedback or evaluations. I will give an evaluation within two to three weeks of the beginning of the semester, to see how things are progressing. Then I know where I stand.

I've strongly recommended MDSolids® to several of my colleagues. I told them that we benefited quite a bit from this software, and that I would even be glad to sit down and show them how it is working and how it operates. Some have come round when they see how the students' attitudes have changed. Still, several have been hesitant in using it. They think they don't have enough time within a course, that they'll be lucky to cover the essential materials. I respond by saying that when I see the students get excited about something, when they see the benefits, when they sit down and interact with the software, then I think it is not a waste of time.

If you have any questions, you can contact me at: mzoghi@engr.udayton.edu