Developing, Integrating, and Sharing Web-Based Resources for Materials Education

Abstract

As the World Wide Web matures, multimedia and programming technologies are evolving to enable the development of instructional software containing significant depth and interactivity. This article discusses the development and integration of web-based tools to support introductory materials science courses and demonstrates how these tools (including QuickTime, Java, Javascript, and virtual reality modeling language) can be used in an educational setting. Such approaches have been successfully integrated into an introductory materials science course for several consecutive terms, and four different lecturers have been able to utilize the same core resource with only minor adjustments. The changes to the course have been very well received by students. In light of this success, we are exploring ways in which web-based content can be more widely distributed such that resources are optimized and development is not duplicated. Issues motivating and arising from this sharing of educational resources will be discussed, and an archive of multimedia objects for materials science will also be demonstrated.