Development and Assessment of Multimedia for "Motor Workshop"

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A multimedia-based title and curricular plan that supports learning about DC motors across a range of learning stages will be designed, developed, and assessed. The multimedia piece will be called Motor Workshop. Prospective users range from freshman physics students to masters-level engineering students. The subject matter will be sub-fractional horsepower DC electric motors. This subject is relevant in a variety of technological fields including physics students learning about electricity and magnetism, electrical engineers learning about circuit analysis and design, and mechanical designers seeking the proper motor to drive a particular device. We have begun working with the instructors of the Stanford courses that introduce engineering undergraduate students to DC motor to define the learning objectives related to motors in their particular course. All are enthusiastic about the prospect of enhanced materials being available to them and their students on motors. The next step in our work with the course instructors is to develop a preliminary curricular plan. The resulting understanding of the particular needs of the various courses and a vision of how multimedia-based curriculum might be used in each course will in large part form the basis for designing and developing the multimedia title. Other major sources of input during this planning phase will be recent work in the Education, Human Computer Interface Design, and Cognitive Science communities. The resulting software title, Motor Workshop, will be a comprehensive and scaffolded information resource pertaining to all aspects of small, DC motors. By scaffolded we mean that concepts will be presented in a graduated manner so that they build in depth and complexity. The architecture of Motor Workshop will allow a more mature student to enter at a more advanced level, but will allow her to return to more basic materials if she finds the need for review. Motor Workshop will include terminology and first principles of physics which will explicate the basic function of motors, concepts of torque, speed and power, issues of circuit design, explanations of the basic function of motors and circuit design, determination of critical motor specifications and the choice of a motor based on these data, and recommended subclasses of motors for particular applications, possibly with catalog data embedded into the software. Motor Workshop will be developed with input from the core instructors at Stanford University. In addition, it will be distributed to engineering faculty at Arizona State University (Prof. D. Evans) and University of Texas (Prof. K. Wood) for them to evaluate its portability to other institutions. Using a variety of assessment techniques that we have had experience with, including pre- and post-test performance comparisons, questionnaires and videotaped observation (VIA), we will attempt to prove our hypothesis that computer-based information resources can be developed which will have a positive effect on the learning environment of a wide developmental range of students. This is not the first multimedia title that this group has created. Three other titles (Bicycle Dissection, The Electric Drill Stack, Linkages) were developed in order to enhance the resources and points of view scripted into the curriculum. These title are consistently being used in our undergraduate curriculum. The proposed DC motor title will built upon the lessons we learned from assessing students working with Bicycle Dissection, The Electric Drill Stack, Linkages over the last two years.