Approximately 1200 students from Engineering and Architecture take this required course each year, but in its current state, statics is a formidable obstacle for many students. Forty percent of the engineering students do not pass the course on their first try; they either drop out or fail.As part of an NSF/SUCCEED project, Dr. Holzer and his team have designed a collaborative learning environment that combines hands-on experiments with interactive multimedia in the framework of experiential learning. Each new topic is introduced with an experiment involving simple machines, levers and pulleys, and a simple truss. Using Macromedia Authorware, a tutorial has been developed to accommodate individual learners and facilitate the learning process.
This multimedia program is designed to include important elements of learning theory: a hypertext environment that can accommodate diverse learning styles; connections to the students' background, the curriculum through transferable skills, and the workplace through case studies; constructive feedback; rich learning resources, and the Socratic approach to stimulate engagement. The program can be used in collaborative learning, as a presentation aid, or for self-directed learning. It also simulates hands-on experiments and guides the learner through the learning process to construct underlying concepts or principles.