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GRASSROOTS: Social Software in education? Wikipedia to stay ahead in Aircraft Structural Analysis and Design courses

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Abstract

Although digital learning applications have been available to lecturers for several years, they are still hesitant to intensively use these tools due to restrictions in time and budget. To help lecturers overcome this hurdle TU Delft offers its lecturers small grants to implement digital learning in their courses through the GRASSROOTS project[1]. One such project is the development of a dedicated Wikipedia encyclopaedia[2] using course material generated jointly by teachers and students participating in the 2nd year BSc course Aircraft Stress Analysis and Structural Design [3]. Teaching staff at TU Delft generally have a double appointment combining research with lecturing in their area of research. Including their research work as state of the art topical content in courses requires course material to be generated on-the-fly. Publishing of course materials such as lecture notes and books usually lags behind presentation thereof. Also developing course material while aiming for sufficient study results is in the current social environment a cooperative teacher-student activity requiring efficient generation of course material, immediate incorporation of feedback and optimal delivery of course material. Thirdly activating students to assist in developing course material is a strong motivator for participation. Considering the social aspects and continuous on-line availability a Wikipedia encyclopaedia is the social software tool of choice. This paper describes the experiences and lessons learned whilst developing a Wikipedia encyclopaedia of course material[4]. Conclusions from project development and deployment together with recommendations for future improvement are presented. Also the opinions and responses of the students participating in the project are reported.
GRASSROOTS: Social Software in education?
Wikipedia to stay ahead in Aircraft Structural Analysis and
Design courses
J.M.A.M. Hol1,*, R. De Breuker2, G.N. Saunders-Smits3, M.E.D. van den Bogaard4
1 Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Aerospace Engineering,
NL-2629HS Delft, the Netherlands (j.m.a.m.hol@tudelft.nl)
2 Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Aerospace Engineering,
NL-2629HS Delft, the Netherlands (r.debreuker@tudelft.nl)
3 Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Aerospace Engineering,
NL-2629HS Delft, the Netherlands (g.n.saunders@tudelft.nl)
4 Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management,
NL-2628DX Delft, the Netherlands (m.e.d.vandenbogaard@tudelft.nl)
* Corresponding Author
Abstract
Although digital learning applications have been available to lecturers for several years,
they are still hesitant to intensively use these tools due to restrictions in time and budget.
To help lecturers overcome this hurdle TU Delft offers its lecturers small grants to
implement digital learning in their courses through the GRASSROOTS project[1]. One
such project is the development of a dedicated Wikipedia encyclopaedia[2] using course
material generated jointly by teachers and students participating in the 2nd year BSc
course Aircraft Stress Analysis and Structural Design [3].
Teaching staff at TU Delft generally have a double appointment combining research with
lecturing in their area of research. Including their research work as state of the art topical
content in courses requires course material to be generated on-the-fly. Publishing of
course materials such as lecture notes and books usually lags behind presentation thereof.
Also developing course material while aiming for sufficient study results is in the current
social environment a cooperative teacher-student activity requiring efficient generation of
course material, immediate incorporation of feedback and optimal delivery of course
material. Thirdly activating students to assist in developing course material is a strong
motivator for participation. Considering the social aspects and continuous on-line
availability a Wikipedia encyclopaedia is the social software tool of choice.
This paper describes the experiences and lessons learned whilst developing a Wikipedia
encyclopaedia of course material[4]. Conclusions from project development and
deployment together with recommendations for future improvement are presented. Also
the opinions and responses of the students participating in the project are reported.
Keywords: Grassroots, Wiki, Social Software
1 INTRODUCTION
The course Aircraft Structural Analysis and Design, course code AE2-521N, is taught in the second year of
the Bachelor’s program of the faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Delft University of Technology, the
Netherlands. The course builds on the first year’s mechanics and materials courses and extends students’
knowledge on structural analysis. The students need this knowledge to study the concept of “design”.
The structural elements used in the course are truss members, beams elements and plates, which can be
both statically determinate and indeterminate. First the students are introduced to the stress and
displacement analysis of the structure. At a later moment these tools are used to parametrically design the
structural elements to satisfy certain stress and displacement requirements. Due to the interacting nature of
indeterminate structures, the concept of design iterations is taught as well. Apart from the three main
structural elements, side issues such as composite cross-sections, stress concentrations and design for
multiple versus combined loads are also dealt with.
The course AE2-521N had run for 3 years before the diverse and extensive course content settled. In a
lecture period teaching the design concepts is done in a lecture-room setting while students exercise the
material by doing challenging design problems. Assessment of students performance is done using a
combination of a written examination, mini projects and state-of-art electronic assessment using
Blackboard[5].
The course material used during this course consisted of lecture sheets, Mathematica[6] notebooks and
Maple worksheets[7] combined with selected reference material. During the lecture period the course is
supported by an active online discussion forum where students can post questions and discuss the course
content. Because of the ongoing course development a formal reader of course material was planned but
had not yet been generated. Because the course content was settling it was decided to develop a reader to
formalize the course material. Parallel to the lecture series of this course an evolving document initially
written by the teaching staff was piecemeal released. Employing the user forum for active reviewing and
continuous adapting was beneficial in fast-tracking development of the reader. Concerning content the
reader reflects the course material at a specific time. By its nature a hard copy reader has a significant
production time, adapting its content is a time-consuming process and the reader is an additional item for
students to carry around.
The TU Delft is implementing policies which increase the use of active learning and the introduction of e-
learning facilities. A campus wide wireless network is available and incoming students are expected to
make efficient use of the available on-line resources during lectures and such. The university also facilitates
a yearly laptop project in which incoming students can obtain state-of-art laptop computers and
educational software. In due time it is foreseen that most students will have laptops and all lecture materials
will be available on-line for use during lectures and practicals. To stay ahead of this changing teaching
environment not only a reader was developed but simultaneously a dedicated Wikipedia encyclopaedia or
Wiki for short, was commissioned initially hosting the same content as the reader.
This paper describes the development of the Wiki outlined above. The authors propose a Wiki to be a
suitable means of enabling on-line access to course material as required by the university. Being a living
document a Wiki is flexible, content can be adapted on-the-fly and access for both teachers and students is
easy. First we will look at the technical and operational issues surrounding the Wiki. Next we present the
current Wiki as developed by this project. The paper is concluded with a number of conclusions from this
project and suggestions for lecturers who are interested in implementing similar technology in their classes.
2 PROBLEM STATEMENT
To the casual user a Wiki is an Internet version of an encyclopaedia. From the outside a Wiki is a collection
of documents containing text and pictures augmented by movies and such. In addition it offers naive
navigation through its contents using so-called hyper-links, tabs and menus. A user only needs to point-
and-click on a hyper-link or tab to select and view another document in or even outside the Wiki. In a
technical sense such a repository of hyper-documents is stored on one or more computers and upon request
i.e. point-and-click, delivered to the user by a web server. The underlying stack of software tools needed to
accomplish this easy content delivery is rather complex. Identifying and selecting the most suitable
software tools as well as building a stable environment with the software tools is just one of the problems to
solve.
In contrast to the rigid content of a hard copy encyclopaedia the content of a Wiki can be changed on-the-
fly by anyone with the right permissions. As our Wiki with course material is build exclusively for a
specific course of TU Delft unrestricted access is deemed unnecessary and even unwanted. We want the
course material in the Wiki to be of high quality and if possible correct. We also want to be able to
determine who changed the Wiki content and for what reason. Thus both access management and
traceability are important issues.
The dynamic nature of the document repository implies all interested parties i.e. teachers and students, can
and if possible should contribute to the Wiki content. Also they are expected to review and when applicable
update each others contributions to enhance the quality of the Wiki content. Getting the parties concerned
actively involved in Wiki content development is a commutation challenge to be addressed.
The problems are summarised below:
Identify, select and install a Wiki environment.
Wiki access management and content traceability.
Involving teachers and students in Wiki content generation.
3 WIKI DEVELOPMENT
In 2007, an initiative was started at the Delft University of Technology to stimulate lecturers to introduce
information and communication technology (ICT) applications in the courses. This initiative is called the
Grassroots project. The lecturers are encouraged to implement new ideas into or modify existing items of
the course content aided by the use of ICT. To compensate for the time invested by the lecturer, a financial
compensation is provided. The development of a Wiki with course material for the Aircraft Structural
Analysis and Design course has been selected as one of the Grassroots projects.
In the following sections, the way the previously summarized problems were handled and our Wiki came to
life is described in more detail.
3.1 Identify, select and install a Wiki environment
At the time the Wiki project was conceived central ICT services of the TU Delft indicated they could
provide a basic environment into allowing us to focus on the Wiki content. When push came to shove ICT
services could not deliver except promising a Wiki module in our central Blackboard system real soon now.
As we wanted to develop the reader and Wiki in parallel with the lecture series it was decided to step up to
the challenge and build our own experimental Wiki environment.
Searching Internet for information on Wiki environments and consulting with colleagues and various
knowledgeable ICT experts resulted in settling on a LAMP-environment. A LAMP-environment combines
the Linux operating system[8] as foundation for an Apache web server[9] to deliver content to users, a
MySQL database management system[10] to store content and the PHP computer scripting language[11]
to dynamically generate web pages. All of these components are available as part of most current Linux
distributions. Because of previous good experience we selected the Fedora 7 distribution of the Fedora
project[12] as the LAMP-environment of choice.
Topping of our software environment is MediaWiki the software which also powers the Wikipedia
websites[13]. Written in PHP and able to use MySQL its a preferred solution for a Wiki environment.
MediaWiki provides a rich environment where textual content and static graphics can be enhanced by
technical formulae using LaTeX[14] and streaming audio and video content. Also given the widespread use
of MediaWiki and its open architecture, a large number of plug-in modules are available. Added to our
Wiki environment were modules for user access management and content traceability.
Front page of AE2-521N Wiki.
3.2 Wiki access management and content traceability
The Wiki content being the reference description of the course material implies controlling who can do
what concerning content needs to be enforced. An open environment as is customary for general purpose
Wikipedia can easily be modified resulting in loss of coherence and integrity of the course material.
Besides affecting the content quality or destruction of content this might potentially result in legal issues if
the actual content becomes part of a dispute and course manager(s) are asked to guarantee the course
material. Therefore it was decided to restrict access for adding and modifying content to only formally
enrolled teachers and students. Other Wiki readers have readonly access but are not allowed editing
privileges. A user enrolment confirmation module was added to the software environment. Enrolment
request by new Wiki users or bulk enrolment of all students in a course is handled by the course
manager(s).
Content page of AE2-521N Wiki.
3.3 Involving teachers and students in Wiki content generation
E-learning and the development of the Internet has provided a new entrance point for students to
knowledge [15]. Before world-wide access to Internet became fashionable students used books and lecture
notes for their studies. Similar to using Internet to access information by point-and-click students have
adopted the same approach to acquiring knowledge. Also knowledge and information in general is
perceived to be a shared commodity and no longer perceived as being someone’s intellectual property.
Expecting teachers to be involved in content generation assumes them to be convinced of the added benefit
of a Wiki with course material especially in comparison with more traditional forms of course material
such as books and lecture notes. Introducing E-learning concepts and demonstrating their practical use in a
Wiki environment is a strong motivator for teachers. Course managers need to provide active assistance,
hands-on workshops and a good and stable Wiki environment to convince teachers to step in. What is
ultimately needed is for them to be able to focus not on the tools but on the course material they teach to
students. For this project course managers and teachers were introduced to E-learning in general and Wiki
environments in particular by presentations, workshops, self-study and simply trying it.
The easiest way to get students to participate in content development is by requiring it as part of the course
assessment. Although participation is guaranteed this also is prone to produce bad results as their
motivation is not intrinsic. If good course material is to be developed, students need to feel they have
ownership of the course material and are intrinsically motivated to contribute. Due to the fast-paced lecture
series and the somewhat delayed availability of the Wiki environment this issue was not sufficiently
addressed. For this project student participation was not solicited beforehand nor was a means of grade
compensation devised.
4 RESULTS
The result of the Grassroots project reported in this paper is a Wiki environment containing the same course
material as the reader. A figure displaying the front page of the course material Wiki is shown on page 4.
The Wiki front page is similar to the table of contents of the course reader which was developed in parallel.
The figure on page 5 displays one of the Wiki pages with course material. On a par with regular course
material the Wiki page contains besides text also technical formulae and pictures.
Richer streaming audio and video content although enabled in the Wiki environment has not been used.
Similarly downloadable course material such as homework assignments and example problems was not
incorporated. As the project called for course material equivalent to the course reader enriched content was
not required. However experiments were done in which the use of enriched content was successfully
demonstrated.
Use of the Wiki with course material following the final lecture and before the written examination soared
as a large number of students accessed the Wiki while preparing for the examination. Also in the
subsequent teaching period students enrolled in related courses and lab work incidentally accessed the Wiki
for reference use.
5 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
This Grassroots project for a Wiki with course material resulted in a Wiki environment hosting the course
material of the Aircraft Stress Analysis and Structural Design course equivalent to the course reader.
During and following this project the following observations and conclusions were reached:
A Wiki environment is equivalent or better than the traditional course reader. Besides the course
material usually covered in a course reader a Wiki environment enables rich content. The varied
and richer content potential allows creation of modern and flexible content. Also access to the
course material is not restricted to availability of hard copy material but only requires Internet
access.
The Wiki content being a live document enables teachers to keep course material synchronized
with evolving lecture content.
A Wiki environment upgrades teaching from a teacher driven activity to a cooperative teacher and
student activity. Cooperation being two-way communication ensures that easier transfer and more
persistent delivery of lecture material.
Due to lack of a student involvement policy and delayed availability of the Wiki environment
student participation was less than expected.
Debriefing students who participated in developing Wiki content learned that ownership by
students of the Wiki content is essential to keep them motivated.
Generally available open source software is of sufficient quality to host a stable and rich Wiki
environment. Operational use by teachers, students and course managers is straighforward.
A limited amount of training in E-learning and Wiki development suffices to get teachers and
students involved and establish a functional course material Wiki.
Easy access to the Wiki with course material helps students in follow-on coursework.
Based on these findings and the lessons learned a new Grassroots project was proposed and granted. This
successor project aims to develop on-the-fly course material for a MSc course in which students study
topics unique to their graduation project in a cooperative setting. Preparing course material in a classical
manner is too time-consuming and only useful for a limited number of students. Using a flexible Wiki
environment with a group of MSc students working on a variety of graduation projects and stimulating
cooperative development of a shared Wiki gives students ownership of the material and commits them to
the project. Teachers contribute by guiding the students on content and in establishing reusable Wiki
content for the next generation of MSc students. In time this will result in a varied and continuously
updated Wiki containing study and reference material relevant to the graduation projects of our MSc
students.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to thank the Executive Board of the University and the Grassroots project
management for providing funding for this project as well as all teaching staff involved in this course, in
particular Dr. M.M. Abdalla and Prof. Dr. Z. Gürdal.
REFERENCES
[1] TU Delft website - ICT in education: http://www.icto.tudelft.nl (in Dutch)
[2] Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org
[3] Gillian N. Saunders -Smits, Zafer Gürdal, Jan Hol, Teaching Innovation for Aircraft Structural Analysis
and Design Mathematica in an Engineering Education Environment, Proceedings of the 2005 American
Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon, June 2005.
[4] Aerospace Structures experimental Wiki server: http://dutlvcb.lr.tudelft.nl/wiki
[5] R. De Breuker, J.M.A.M. Hol, G.N. Saunders-Smits, M.E.D. van den Bogaard, GRASSROOTS: How to
get lecturers to go digital? - Advanced Use of BlackBoard for Online Testing in Aircraft Structural Design
Courses, SEFI 36th Annual Conference, Aalborg, Denmark, July 2008 (to be published).
[6] Wolfram Mathematica: http://www.wolfram.com
[7] Maplesoft Maple: http://www.maplesoft.com
[8] Linux operating system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux
[9] Apache web server: http://httpd.apache.org
[10] MySQL database management system: http://mysql.com
[11] PHP computer scripting language: http://php.net
[12] Fedora project: http://fedoraproject.org
[13] MediaWiki, the software which powers websites like Wikipedia: http://www.mediawiki.org
[14] LaTeX project: http://www.latex-project.org
[15] Bourgeouis, E., Higher Education and Research for the ERA: current challenges and trends for the
future - Final report of the STRATA-ETAN expert group, Office for official publications of the European
Communities, Luxembourg, 2002.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
Conference Paper
Full-text available
An initiative has been under way in restructuring the Aircraft Stress Analysis and Structural Design course at The Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at Delft University of Technology to meet the needs of changing undergraduate educational environment. These changes are the result of: 1. Changes in the students’ study and learning habits, 2. Expectation of the higher level course instructors and the industry employers from the undergraduate students 3. The availability of powerful numerical tools that enable graduating engineers to perform a variety of daily engineering tasks In the new course emphasis will be on the fundamentals of structural design and treatment of design of structural systems with multidisciplinary features, while integrating mathematical and engineering mechanics skills into the design process. More than the changes to the content of the course, however, addition of new curriculum elements that will prepare today’s engineers for tomorrow’s challenges are under way. These additions/changes are along the way of making the course material available to the students via web based content, carrying out the lectures via computer based tutorials and presentations, and conducting electronic exams ad quizzes via the “BlackBoard” tool. As a main tool for the in-class tutorials as well as the homework assignments use will be made of Mathematica. This paper will report on the new course, the use of Mathematica in in-class tutorials, and the response from students and lessons learned with the view of providing others with ideas on how to reform their traditional structural design courses.
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Although digital learning applications have been available to lecturers for several years, lecturers are still hesitant to intensively use them due to restrictions in time and budget. To help lecturers overcome this hurdle TU Delft offers its lecturers small grants to implement digital learning in their courses through the GRASSROOTS project. One such project is based at the faculty of Aerospace Engineering and aims to use the test module in the Blackboard electronic learning environment in the course Aircraft Stress Analysis and Structural Design. This is a 2nd year BSc course. The test module is used for three reasons. First of all, the lectures cover an extensive amount of material and students need to be encouraged to keep up with the course contents. Secondly, at the end of the course the students need to be able to deal with large design problems. Necessary skills cannot properly be assessed through a traditional hand-written exam only. Third, the course traditionally enrols a large number of students (350+), therefore, automatic evaluation of the students' answers is desirable. To encourage the students to practice their design skills, we put regular Quizzes online for the students, to test them on material dealt with in the recent lectures. This stimulates students to look at the course notes, which contributes to a better understanding of future lectures. The second challenge is dealt with by providing students with an extensive design exercise to be solved using numeric tools. After one -two weeks, students are examined on the design problem via BlackBoard. This is offered three times during the course, and is not compulsory. This paper describes the experiences and lessons learned whilst making advanced use of the BlackBoard online testing tools. The paper gives recommendations on how to prepare and deal with such tests for future users. Included in the lessons learned are reports on the opinion and responses of the students.
Teaching Innovation for Aircraft Structural Analysis and Design – Mathematica in an Engineering Education Environment
  • N Gillian
  • Saunders-Smits
Gillian N. Saunders -Smits, Zafer Gürdal, Jan Hol, Teaching Innovation for Aircraft Structural Analysis and Design – Mathematica in an Engineering Education Environment, Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon, June 2005.
10] MySQL database management system: http://mysql.com [11] PHP computer scripting language: http://php
  • Apache Web Server
Apache web server: http://httpd.apache.org [10] MySQL database management system: http://mysql.com [11] PHP computer scripting language: http://php.net [12] Fedora project: http://fedoraproject.org
Higher Education and Research for the ERA: current challenges and trends for the future -Final report of the STRATA-ETAN expert group, Office for official publications of the European Communities
  • E Bourgeouis
Bourgeouis, E., Higher Education and Research for the ERA: current challenges and trends for the future -Final report of the STRATA-ETAN expert group, Office for official publications of the European Communities, Luxembourg, 2002.