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

Idea-Pen项目使用平板电脑技术，提供了一种帮助学生在课堂环境中执行工程分析问题的方法。使用电子笔，学生将能够绘制结构分析问题的草图。研究人员先前编写的图像分析软件被用来将草图传递给有限元分析(FEA)程序。然后，有限元分析程序将对学生绘制的草图进行分析。学生的学习预计将增加，因为他们将能够探索设计的几个选项(增加设计空间)，因为分析可以快速完成。通过增加设计空间，学生将能够观察到设计变化对他们的设计性能的影响。这将增加对系统性能的直觉，并将导致更好的设计技能。这一结果是通过分析学生在考试中的表现来监测的。预计这项技术将有助于将课堂从以教师为中心转变为以学生为中心的环境。我们通过分析未由教师布置的问题的数量和种类来监控这一预期。预计课堂将变得更具互动性，当然对学生来说也更具吸引力。这一期望通过直接测量学生尝试的问题的数量来监控。预计项目成果将得到广泛传播，因为该软件将以开放源码格式提供，并可通过流行的应用程序下载中心分发。

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.