AbsBactWe, the authors, have each managed group projects for our respective senior majors for some time. Three years ago we combined the senior courses and each project team is now composed of both computer science and engineering majors. We were motivated by the desire to broaden the senior experience in both disciplines as well as to use the projects to attract prospective majors. The most recent project was to bnild autonomous line-tracking vehicles for racing. Since the computer scientists do not necessarily have any exposure to analog circuits and the engineers have only limited knowledge, it was necessary to provide an environment that required little analog design. The Handy Board [7] proved to be a useful part of that environment. This paper discusses our experience teaching an interdisciplinary group project-oriented course, discusses strengths and weaknesses of using the Handy Board in this context, and draws some conclusions based on our experience.
The Courseware Development Studio is part of the NSF Synthesis Coalition and has been authoring engineering courseware since 1990. One primary goal of the Coalition has been the creation of a nationally accessible database of academic courseware (NEEDS). A further mission of the Studio is to provide courseware authors with m m p l e s of accessible quality courseware. While the courseware is being developed, the type of delivery system that will be used topresent the material in a classroom must be decided.Some of the Studio's experiences a d dificulties using a dedicated multimedia classroom are derailed This setup is compared with a portable display system that can be used in a conventional classroom.The Intemet is becoming a valuable resource and an integral part of today's educational environment. Setuppmcedures that the studio had to follow to become connected to the World Wide Web are outlined. In addition, instructions on how to access the NEEDS database via the WWW are given. Suggestions on how to avoid problems between high-powered authoring tools and database accessibility by potential users are explored. In order to maintain a high degree of quality on the database, some guidelines are outlined for evaluating courseware. Courseware evaluation is intended to guarantee high standards in leaming materials, and to serve as a reference for authors during the development phase.
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