XSEDE12

EOT:A Learning Outcome Driven Cyber Infrastructure for Thermodynamics Education

Abstract: The web portal TEST, the Expert System for Thermodynamics (www.thermofluids.net) is a courseware that is being used in Engineering Thermodynamics classes by more than 2000 registered educators around the world. The courseware combines a number of resoures: Tables and charts, a library of animations covering every major topic, rich internet applications for simulating important thermodynamic systems, thermodynamic calculators called daemons (named after Maxwell's daemon) to verify manual solution and pursue what-if studies, and sixteeen chapters multi-media problems and examples. In this work, we present an outcome driven approach to link various resources offered by this courseware to motivate a student to learn. For this purpose, we have associtated 24 learning outcomes to engineering thermodynamics, a two semester course in most universities. For each outcome a fixed number of problems (10) are turned into key problems, designated by a key icon next to the problem. As a student tries to solve a key problem, the outcomes fulfilled by the problem is displayed and the progress made by the student is monitored. On successful solution or after an unsuccessful attmept, a customized recommendation of resources - what to read, what animations to browse, what tables to famiarize, what daemon and RIA to use etc. - is made. A student can keep track of his or her progress and estimate the work required to reach various proficiency level on a given oucome. When a large number of students start using this system, it may become possible to track which resources are more helpful in thermodynamic problem solving. A potential benefit of this approach is direct assessment of student achievements with learninng outcomes, an area of high emphasis from the acredition board.