Pedagogical Material Development And Curriculum Assessment To Enhance Nondestructive Inspection In Aircraft Maintenance Technology (Amt)

Abstract

This paper presents results from curriculum enhancements implemented at an Aircraft Maintenance Technology (AMT) program to improve the learning process of students through creation of educational materials, assessment tools and curriculum redesign. Using Bloom's Taxonomy in cognitive and psychomotor domains, course objectives were refined to create more meaningful student outcomes. These were mapped to reflect the expected student proficiency and goals as advised by regulatory agencies. These include the guidelines stipulated by the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration). We identified course objectives for six course modules currently taught in an aircraft maintenance program at a 2-year technical college: ACM 120 (Materials & Corrosion Control), ACM 167(Landing Gear Systems), ACM 174 (Airframe Inspection), ACM 210 (Reciprocating Engine Overhaul), ACM 224 (Turbine engine Overhaul), and ACM 226 (Engine Inspections). For these modules, each objective was analyzed under Bloom's Taxonomy's sub-domains. These include knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation under the broad cognitive domain and initiation, manipulation, precision, articulation and naturalization under the psychomotor domain. Through an iterative process, course objectives were refined for the six course modules and objectives were transformed to outcomes. The curriculum material development process was extended to identify new non-destructive inspection (NDI) simulators to be incorporated in classroom activities and learning processes. These interactive 3D knowledge objects based simulators are expected to be integrated in the AMT curriculum to improve the learning outcomes. A thorough statistical analysis will be carried out to evaluate the student outcomes through the enhanced curriculum. A novel Excel based decision support system, which will be used for the curriculum design and as an assessment tool/template using Visual Basic for Application (VBA) is proposed as future work.

Analysis of frontier digital technologies in continuing airworthiness management frameworks and applications

“…One of the applications of VR in airline maintenance is improving the curriculum of maintenance training and student learning via the integration of VR technology-based simulators (Rupasinghe et al , 2011), while more applications of VR facilitate the training of personnel, e.g. Li et al (2019), Rupasinghe et al (2011) and Gautier et al (2007) offer VR tools for remote inspection of aircraft. On the other hand, AR is a scene or case in which the real environment is complemented by using graphics or text generated by a computer; AR displays are combinations of real environments with graphical enhancements, which are known as augmentations, running interactively in real-time (Haritos and Macchiarella, 2005a).…”

“…Its display may be in the form of a computer monitor or specialized head-mounted displays (Washburn et al , 2007). One of the applications of VR in airline maintenance is improving the curriculum of maintenance training and student learning via the integration of VR technology-based simulators (Rupasinghe et al , 2011), while more applications of VR facilitate the training of personnel, e.g. Li et al (2019), Rupasinghe et al (2011) and Gautier et al (2007) offer VR tools for remote inspection of aircraft.…”

Applying Virtual Simulation in Teaching: An Experiment System for Ultrasonically Testing Weld Defects in Large Components

“…The aim is to provide an interactive, cost-effective, and efficient teaching and training platform. Furthermore, this research explores the impact that utilizing a virtual simulation teaching and experiment system for ultrasonic NDT has on the engineering quality training of welding students [3][4][5][6].…”

Technology Education E-Learning Model: The South Carolina Partnership

“…Their use in technical education has yet to be fully realized, however 25 . Research shows that education complemented with simulation and 3-D visualization, helps students learn faster and retain knowledge longer [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38] . Regarding technical education, the use of E-learning and visualization/ simulation/ VR (virtual reality) tools is restricted to nontechnical courses.…”