24 research outputs found
Study on the use of a combination of IPython Notebook and an industryâstandard package in educating a CFD course
It is common that industryâstandard packages are used in teaching professional engineering courses in finalâyear undergraduate and postgraduate levels. To improve the competency of students in using such professional packages, it is important that students develop a good understanding of theoretical/fundamental concepts used on the packages. However, it is always a challenge to teach theoretical/fundamental concepts in the computationalârelated courses. The teaching of such subjects can be improved by the use of advanced openâsource web applications. The present research proposes an approach based upon the combination of Jupyter Notebook and an industryâstandard package to teach an applied, computationally related course. We investigate the use of backward design and a novel tool called IPython (Jupyter) Notebook to redesign a postgraduate Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) course. IPython Notebook is used to design a series of integrated lecture slides and tutorial tasks, and also one of the assignments for the blendedâlearningâbased, semesterârun, CFD course. The tool allows the implementation of backward curriculum design and a learnâbyâdoing approach in redesigning the course. The materials produced were used on the first part of the course which contributed 40% towards the course's final mark and delivered the fundamental concepts of CFD over the first half of the semester. The remaining 60% of the mark was based on a final project from the materials taught on using an industryâstandard CFD package in solving complex CFD problems during the second half of the semester. It was shown that the Ipython environment is a very useful tool which provides learningâbyâdoing practices allowing students to have a coherent integrated lecture, tutorial, and assignment material in a highly interactive way. It improved (a) students' engagement in teaching complex theoretical concepts, (b) students satisfaction of the course and (c) students performance in working with the industryâstandard package over the second half of the semester
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