Collaborative Research - Live Energy

该项目是德克萨斯农工大学、斯坦福大学、宾夕法尼亚州立大学、加州州立大学长滩分校和普莱里维尤农工大学的合作项目。研究团队正在开发一种持续更新的关于能源可持续发展的在线教科书，以支持专业和非专业的核心科学和工程课程。该项目建立在早期NSF项目的基础上，在该项目中，开发传统教科书的尝试表明，需要为这样一个充满活力和广泛的领域提供替代教育材料。满足这一需求的是一种在线资源，该资源随着知识库的扩大而增长并系统地更新，使用的是典型印刷教科书中没有的技术。该教科书介绍化石、替代能源和可再生能源；能源转换、利用和开采；以及对环境的影响。该项目的目标是：(1)采用协作技术，使许多内容编写者能够同时工作；(2)编写教科书内容，并以对每个伙伴机构有效的形式汇编它；(3)与印刷教科书相比，评估其对学生学习的教学价值；(4)向K-12岁以下教师群体中未被充分代表的群体开展宣传，使其成为在线内容的潜在开发者和使用者；以及(5)传播教科书本身和评估其教学价值的研究结果。在独立专家的指导下，评估工作正在使用各种方法来监测(1)在线教科书对学生内容学习、对能源和工程领域的态度以及利用在线资源学习技能的影响；(2)教师在开发在线资源方面的合作特点；(3)开发的资源的采用情况。Connexion网站被用来宣传和传播教科书；评估结果将发布在研究人员的网站上，在工程教育会议上展示，并在期刊文章中描述。更广泛的影响包括一系列不同机构之间的合作、在K-12外联活动中对任职人数不足的群体的关注以及材料和评价结果的传播。

The project is a collaboration involving Texas A&M University, Stanford University, The Pennsylvania State University, California State University Long Beach, and, Prairie View A&M University. The team of investigators is developing a continuously updated online textbook on energy sustainability to support core science and engineering courses for both majors and non majors. The project builds on an earlier NSF project in which attempts to develop a traditional textbook suggested the need for alternative educational material for such a dynamic and extensive field. This need is being met by an online resource that grows and is updated systematically as the knowledge base expands, using technologies that are not available in a typical printed textbook. The textbook addresses fossil, alternative, and renewable energy sources; energy conversions, utilization and extraction; and environmental impacts. The project goals are to: (1) implement collaborative technology that enables many content writers to work simultaneously (2) write the textbook content and assemble it in a form that is effective for each of the partner institutions, (3) assess the pedagogical value to student learning compared to that with a printed textbook, (4) conduct outreach to underrepresented groups in the K-12 teacher population as potential developers and users of the created on line content, and (5) disseminate the textbook itself and study results assessing its pedagogical value. Evaluation efforts, under the direction of an independent expert, are using an assortment of approaches to monitor (1) the impact of the online textbook on student content leaning, attitudes about energy and the engineering field, and learning skills with online resources; (2) the characteristics of faculty collaboration in developing online resources; and (3) the adoption of the developed resources. The Connexions website is being used to publicize and disseminate the textbook; evaluation results will be posted on the investigators' website, presented at engineering education conferences, and described in journal articles. Broader impacts include the collaboration among a diverse set of institutions, the focus on underrepresented groups in the K-12 outreach, and the dissemination of the material and evaluation results.