IDEA-Pen: Interactive Design and Analysis through a Pen-Based Interface

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The IDEA-Pen project is using tablet technology to provide a means of helping students perform engineering analysis problems in a classroom environment. Using an electronic pen, students will be able to sketch structural analysis problems. Image analysis software previously written by the investigators is used to pass the sketch to a Finite Element Analysis (FEA) program. The FEA program will then provide analysis of the sketch made by the students. Student learning is expected to increase because they will be able to explore several options for design (increase the design space) since the analysis can be done quickly. By increasing the design space, students will be able to observe the effects that design changes have on the performance of their design. This will increase intuition about system performance and will result in better design skill. This outcome is being monitored by analyzing student performance on exams. It is also expected that the technology will help shift the classroom from a teacher centered to a student centered environment. This expectation is being monitored by analyzing the number and variety of problems attempted that are not assigned by the instructor. Classrooms are expected to become more interactive and certainly more engaging for the students. This expectation is monitored by directly measuring the numbers of problems attempted by students. Widespread dissemination of the project results are expected to occur because the software will be provided in an open source format and could be distributed through popular application downloads centers.