This work has as proposal the introduction of new technologies when teaching engineering, namely to use interactive multimedia resources and mobile devices as assistance to fight the failure in school performance and to motive students to learn Structural Analysis I of the 3rd year of the Civil Engineering course in the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP). We introduce the problem, the results of approvals/failures and discontinuance of the subject. We also present the advantages of using information and communication technologies in higher education

Bottentuit Junior, João Batista

Coutinho, Clara Pereira

Negretti, Rafael Dorilêo

Universidade do Minho: RepositoriUM

Coimbra, Portugal September 3 – 7, 2007 International Conference on Engineering Education – ICEE 2007 BOTTENTUIT JUNIOR, João Batista; NEGRETTI, Rafael Dorilêo; COUTINHO, Clara Pereira (2007) Methodology to Use Multimédia Applications and Mobile Devices When Teaching Structural Analysis. Proceedings of the International Conference on Engineering Education. Universidade de Coimbra. Coimbra.  Methodology to use Multimedia Applications and Mobile Devices When Teaching Structural Analysis  João Batista Bottentuit Junior1, Rafael Dorileo Negretti2, Clara Pereira Coutinho1  1 - Instituto de Educação e Psicologia da Universidade do Minho – Braga – Portugal – jbbj@terra.com.br, ccoutinho@iep.uminho.pt 2 - Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto – Porto – Portugal – negretti@rafaelnegretti.com  Abstract - This work has as proposal the introduction of new technologies when teaching engineering, namely to use interactive multimedia resources and mobile devices as assistance to fight the failure in school performance and to motive students to learn Structural Analysis I of the 3rd year of the Civil Engineering course in the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP). We introduce the problem, the results of approvals/failures and discontinuance of the subject. We also present the advantages of using information and communication technologies in higher education.  Index Terms - Multimedia Applications, Structural Analysis, M-Learning 1. INTRODUCTION After globalization and introduction of new technologies, it is impossible to think of education as a static process, in which the teacher is seen as an informer and students as listeners. In this new educational context, the teacher becomes an information manager and a guider to those students who seek for knowledge. The students are surrounded by information of several sources and teachers need to use all technological resources, in order to appeal to and facilitate the teaching process. For Oliveira Netto (2005, p.36) “new technologies in education can be used to energize the classes, making them more interesting and connected to reality and mainly to learning.” Within this context, we analyzed the last 10 (ten) years of teaching of Structural Analysis I in Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP) and we detected a high level of failures and discontinuances along these years. Having these problematic results in mind, we proposed the use of multimedia applications and mobile technologies to fight the negative performance of students. This paper has as main goal to introduce new teaching methodologies in engineering by using interactive multimedia resources as a support material when teaching Engineering. We have started to identify the low approvals of FEUP students, we introduced the advantages of using multimedia applications in education, we presented some examples of the usage of multimedia in others universities that adopt ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) as a pedagogical resource. Besides the mobile devices that can motivate students and consequently improve the students’ approval in the subject, we also presented the software FTOOL (Two dimensional Frame Analysis Tool) as a didactic proposal. 2. PROBLEM The subject that we have used as a parameter to this study was Structural Analysis, taught in the 5th year of the Civil Engineering course in FEUP. Data collection to this research was done through the information system of the University of Porto (SIFEUP), where we obtained data to evaluate the amount of Discontinuances, Approvals and Failures of the students between 1997 and 2006 (see table 1). According to graphics 1 and 2, based on collected data, we see a high number of discontinuances with a maximum point of 38,5% and when we add the discontinuances to the failures this number is even higher, with a maximum point of 55,4%. These results reveal a low approval of students in this subject, which make us believe that innovative methodologies could change this image.  Structural Analysis Year D F A F +D 1997/1998 36,4 15 48,6 51,4 1998/1999 35,1 10,3 54,6 45,4 1999/2000 34,1 15 50,9 49,1 2000/2001 35,5 16,3 48,2 51,8 2001/2002 29,2 13,1 57,7 42,3 2002/2003 24 7,9 68,1 31,9 2003/2004 30 18,7 51,3 48,7 2004/2005 33 17 50 50 2005/2006 38,4 16,9 44,7 55,3 D-Discontinuances, F-Failures, A- Approvals  Coimbra, Portugal September 3 – 7, 2007 International Conference on Engineering Education – ICEE 2007 Table 1: Students’ performance in Structural Analysis I between 1997 and 2006.  38,433302429,235,534,135,136,4010203040501997/19981998/19991999/20002000/20012001/20022002/20032003/20042004/20052005/2006 Graphic 1: Discontinuances between 1997 and 2006.  55,35048,731,942,351,849,145,451,401020304050601997/19981998/19991999/20002000/20012001/20022002/20032003/20042004/20052005/2006 Graphic 2: Addition of discontinuances and failures between 1997 and 2006.  Structural Analysis I aims to study the principles and behaviour of reticulate structures and the development of the force and displacement method to calculate it. It also deepens the knowledge of hyperstatical structures behaviour in linear regime. The teaching method is based on the presentation and discussion of all aspects of the subject, by showing simple and appropriate examples. On practical-theoretical classes are proposed and discussed applications related to the theoretical part. Some exercises are also proposed to be done individually and as a way of evaluation. 3. MULTIMEDIA APPLICATIONS IN EDUCATION Koma (1991), Preece (1993) and Tolhurst (1995) said that the word multimedia appeared in the end of the 50’s and it represented the introduction, session or courses that used several methods or formats such as text, image, video and sound to present information. For Ribeiro (2004, p.3) a multimedia application “is the program that controls the presentation of information to the user using multimedia services.” Some examples of multimedia applications are the games, the graphics, images and sounds that allow an interaction between the user and the contents. Interactivity is one of the main characteristics of multimedia applications, because students can control the rhythm of the presentation of information. The student has the ability to skip between contents and multimedia and this ability defines hypermedia. For Carvalho (2002) multimedia has four components that characterize it: • Formats – multimedia documents can have several formats in the same file (sound, image, video, animation and graphics). • Organization of information – structure or topology that defines and limits the navigation of the user can be classified as: sequential or linear, hierarchical or network structure.  • Information storage – Represents the way information is codified and stored in multimedia applications.  • User role – an interactive multimedia document is dynamic due to its own interactivity and the user has an active role by selecting what he wants to see and by being responsible for search information in his own learning process. The advantages of using multimedia applications in education are well known and some of them are: • Linear or non-linear access to information • Possibility of working in cooperative environments • The advantage of presenting information through several formats • Redirection of information through hyperlinks The multimedia application in an educational context has to be comment because the laboratory that is being developed has some multimedia characteristics as they allow learners to access (linear or non-linear) and interact with the system. For Wald (1998), Assis, Bittencourt and Noronha (2002) the advantages of using multimedia applications when teaching engineering are several and some of them are: • Applications are good to explain the concepts • They allow the simulation of abstract objects and concepts • They allow interactivity • They allow a fast and efficient cooperation and communication between the users • They allow a fast update of the courses contents and they make them available for a bigger number of students • They can be used in distance learning and as an incentive to self-learning • They raise the productivity once the time to travel is reduced as well as the time for students at different places to participate in the experiences • They allow the development of new knowledge • Their cost and maintenance is low  4. RECENT STUDIES IN THIS AREA  Assis, Bittencourt and Noronha (2002) have developed a project in order to offer courses based on “interactive classes” to subjects such as Resistências dos Materiais (Strength of Materials) and Estruturas de Concreto Armado (Reinforced Concrete Structures). The developed resources would be helpful in theoretical classes, allowing students to Coimbra, Portugal September 3 – 7, 2007 International Conference on Engineering Education – ICEE 2007 see complex graphics and the simulation of engineering analyses.  This project was developed at the Departamento de Engenharia de Estruturas e Fundações of Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, and the experiences are available on http://www.lmc.ep.usp.br/pesquisas/ TecEdu/. The main proposals of this project were: • Development and introduction of new teaching methodologies using multimedia resources as helpful material; • Digitising of existing print material for the students of the course (books, notes and list of exercises); • Development of new educational material using educative programs, graphical animations and simulations of engineering analyses; • Disclosure of the results in seminars, master and doctoral theses and publishing of articles in congresses and magazines; • Bibliographical research on the subject; • Use of the developed materials in theoretical classes; • Availability of the material in a specific homepage on the Internet; • Creation of a support group to develop the material; • Collection of preparation material to create distance courses;  Another example of the use of the multimedia applications in teaching enginnering is Liang’s case (2002).  In the author’s experience, engineering dynamics is a difficult course for students to study and for instructors to teach. The course is rather analytical and has little or no laboratory work. Typically engineering technology students would like to relate the concepts in a course to their work and life in order to learn well. However, probably because dynamics textbooks are written by scholars in theoretical mechanics, some descriptions in these books may not have clear engineering sense to students.  Some dynamics textbooks today include computer disks or CD’s to use computer graphics simulation to illustrate the motion of some mechanical devices such as Geneva mechanism. While those multimedia materials are very helpful, they have the following limitations:  • Only selected example problems are illustrated. Homework problems are basically not included.  • Only a multimedia viewer, which limits how the animation can be manipulated, is included on the CD.  • Students are not involved in development of the models. Hence they do not learn the techniques to develop models of their own.  According to the author’s experience, developing multimedia models for the dynamics course has the following benefits:  • Through the process of creating and using dynamics models of mechanisms in the book, students will hopefully be able to use multimedia dynamic modeling technique in their work.  • During the process of creating a dynamic solid model, students will need to add some design details to the original dynamic sketch and therefore gain more engineering design knowledge and experience.  • Constructing dynamic solid models of given problems often presents challenges to students beyond what they have learned in the CAD course. They will gain more knowledge and experience of computer-aided solid design.   5. PROPOSAL TO USE MULTIMEADIA APPLICATIONS AND MOBILE DEVICES  We have suggested the software FTOOL (Two-dimensional Frame Analysis Tool) as a way to fight the failure in Structural Analysis I at the Faculty of Engineering. This software is a program to teach the structural behaviour of plane porticoes and it has as main goal to teach the numerical techniques of analyses. Its educational proposal is to encourage the student to learn about structural behaviour. Martha (2002) says that teaching of this subject has proving that the learning process of structural analyses methods is not good without some previous knowledge of the structural behaviour. It is very difficult to encourage the student to learn about analyses methods theory without some understanding of the models’ behaviour in practice. When the student has the opportunity to learn about the structural behaviour at the same time he learns about analyses methods, this learning improves a lot.  (see picture 1)  Picture 1: Example of the Application on Screen.  In this application, the student has full control over the structural model that is being analyzed. The control is done through mouse or keyboard. The program has all the phases of the structural analyses process, which are: • Creation and control over the model with application of attributes (pre-processing); • Direct stiffness method or nonlinear external solution (ADINA); • Presentation of the results (pos-processing).  For Martha (2002) the basic goal of FTOOL is based on the need of being a simple tool, joining in a single interface resources to achieve an effective creation and control over the model (pre-processing) with a quick and clear structural analyses and fast and effective presentation of the results (pos-processing). The system has a graphical interface based Coimbra, Portugal September 3 – 7, 2007 International Conference on Engineering Education – ICEE 2007 on direct control by the user that uses a screen system, with menus as cascades and buttons. The application was initially developed within a research project of the Informatics Department of PUC-Rio (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro) and financed by CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico). The creator and responsible for the program is Professor Dr. Luiz Fernando Martha of the Civil Engineering Department of PUC-Rio. Nowadays the most update version is 2.11. This software can be easily obtained and make available by FEUP, because teachers and students can install it when teaching these contents as it has the proper infrastructures for that. The m-learning or mobile learning is characterized by the use of mobile devices in teaching and education. For Bottentuit Junior, Coutinho e Alexandre (2006), the advantages of using these devices in education can be numerous if we think about the portability that students have to access updated information on several matters whether in school or at home. Some of the advantages of teaching through mobile learning are: • To increase the number of users, as almost every student owns a mobile phone; • The devices that students have are of a model that allows Internet access; • The access to the contents can be done anywhere, at anytime; • To learn how to use a mobile phone is easier than to learn how to use a computer; • The mobile device cost is lower than the computers cost. Besides the advantages, we can also present as main disadvantages: • The small size of the screens; • Limited keyboards; • Less processing capacities; • To access Internet through mobile devices is still very expensive. A research made in 2005, named From e-learning to m-learning, made by ericson shows that (86%) of students think that it is easy to use applications through mobile devices, (67%) believe that the educational goals can be achieved and (61%) state that the e-learning quality improves with the use of these resources. The proposal to use mobile devices would be as a complement to classes once most part of the students has mobile phones or PDA with technology to access interactive multimedia applications. With this resource, the student can watch the simulations anytime, anywhere with Internet access. An example of this technology can be seen in picture 2.   Picture 2: Examples of multimedia applications for PDA and mobile phones.  6. FINAL COMMENTS Multimedia applications can play an important role to students and teachers. Villate (2005, p.3) said that “each year our students are more motivated for informatics technologies and less motivated for traditional teaching. To accomplish our mission of teaching, we have the duty of adapt our teaching methods to new technologies”. Informatics applications offer important potentialities to education and learning, allowing a continuous enrichment of our knowledge. This leads the educational system and learning to be redirected along the development of these technologies. Livro Verde Para Sociedade da Informação em Portugal (1997, p.44). The biggest challenge is to use these resources and methodologies as a solution to the failures in this subject, which is of extreme importance in the learning process of a civil engineer.  We hope that the results of the research about the use of multimedia applications and Mobile Devices in engineering teaching can be presented very soon to all scientific community of the educational system, so it can be implemented in other contexts, namely in activities such as e-learning.    Coimbra, Portugal September 3 – 7, 2007 International Conference on Engineering Education – ICEE 2007 7. REFERENCES ASSIS, W.S.; BITTENCOURT, T.N.; NORONHA M. (2002) “Desenvolvimento de Recursos Multimídia para o Ensino de Estruturas de Concreto”, IBRACON, São Paulo, 2002. BOTTENTUIT JUNIOR, João Batista; COUTINHO, Clara Pereira; ALEXANDRE, Dulclerci Sternadt (2006) M-learning e Webquests: as novas tecnologias como recurso pedagógico. Proceedings of 8th International Symposium on Computers in Education (SIIE2006). Servicio de Imprenta de la Universidad de León, v. 2. p. 346-353. ERICSON (2002) From E-learning to M-learning http://learning.ericssonnet/mlearning/project_one/index.html WALD, Michael S. (1998) Multimedia in Engineering Education: International Issues and Projects. Global Journal of Engineering Educational. Vol. 2, No.2, Australia KOZMA, Robert B. (1991). Learning with Media. Reviw of Educational Research, 61 (2), 179-211. LIANG, Wilson (2002) Using Multimedia in Teaching Dynamics. Proceedings of  the Conference for Industry and Education Collaboration.   MARTHA, Luiz Fernando (2002) FTool: Um programa gráfico-interactivo para ensino de comportamento de estruturas. Disponível em http:// www. Tecgraf.puc-rio.br/ftool. Acesso em 06.04.2007 OLIVEIRA NETTO, Alvim António de (2005). Novas Tecnologias & Universidade: da dialéctica tradicionalista à inteligência artificial: desafios e armadilhas. Petrópolis, Editora Vozes.  PREECE, Jenny (1993). Hypermedia, multimédia and human factors. In C. Latchem, J. Williamson & L. Henderson-Lancett(eds.) Interactive Multimédia. London:Kogan Page, 135-150. PORTUGAL.(1997)  Ministerio da Ciência e da Tecnologia. Missão para a Sociedade da Informação. Livro verde para a Sociedade da Informação em Portugal. Lisboa VILLATE, Jaime Enrique (2005) E-learning na Universidade do Porto Caso de Estudo: Física dos Sistemas Dinâmicos. II Workshop E-learning da Universidade do Porto. KAEFER, Luis Fernando: MARTHA, Luiz Fernando; BITTENCOURT, Túlio Nogueira (2000) FTOOL Ensino de Comportamento de Estruturas com Múltiplos Casos e Combinações de Carregamento. IV Simpósio Mineiro de Mecânica Computacional, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, Brasil, pp. 305-312  

Methodology to use multimedia applications and mobile devices when teaching structural analysis

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