Holistic Numerical Methods

Winner of 2004 ASME Curriculum Innovation Award, the project is developing educational modules to teach a numerical methods course.  The modules are providing faculty and students customization based on engineering major (Chemical, Civil, Computer, General, Electrical, Industrial, and Mechanical) and computational system (Maple, Mathcad, Mathematica, and Matlab).

Each instructional module enhances instructor preparation and development, and student educational experience by a) reviewing pre-requisite mathematical background information, b) demonstrating the need for and use of numerical solutions through real-life examples, c) combining text and interactive self-directed simulations to illustrate algorithms, examples, advantages, pitfalls, errors and convergence of numerical techniques, d) relating historical information to numerical methods, and e) providing self-assessment tools and problem sets.

Provided free of charge,

• we believe in the philosophy of having open dissemination of educational materials, philosophy, and modes of thought, that will help lead to fundamental changes in the way colleges and universities utilize the Web as a vehicle for education - MIT OCW

• provide resources that are pedagogically neutral but can be easily modified and assembled to suit an instructor's needs.

Self-sustaining dissemination avenues of project materials include the Numerical Methods website at USF, website hubs of major course management providers, digital libraries, and application centers of computational systems. Results are shared at major engineering education conferences and published in engineering education journals.

The impact of the modules on student learning, student satisfaction, and instruction acceptance at three diverse institutions will be evaluated using formative and summative evaluation techniques.

Sponsor: National Science Foundation

Principal Investigator: Autar Kaw

Collaborators: Steven Barnicki (MSOE), Egwu Kalu (FAMU), Melinda Hess (College of Education), Sally Coovert (APEX)