Paper Authors

Abstract

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

A Modified Case Study: Using Multimedia Courseware To Teach Modular Fixturing

Veekit O’Charoen, Teresa Hall, Haig Vahradian Western Washington University / South Dakota State University / Millersville University

Introduction Modular fixturing is an important concept in tooling design and applications courses in the Manufacturing Engineering Technology (MET) and Industrial Technology (IT) curriculum. Traditionally, a lecture is given on the topic using computer slides, videos, CAD graphics of the tooling elements along with physical components to pass around, and/or catalogs to inspect. If the time is available, a tour of local manufacturing operations which utilize tooling applications of interest may be observed. The wide variety of tooling and fixtures are difficult to cover within a single quarter (or semester), especially if consideration of related topics on gaging, cutting tools, and geometric dimensioning and tolerancing are included. The need for interactive teaching tools for discreet technical fields such as modular fixturing in tool design applications is indicated and as a result, ToolTRAIN© was introduced as a solution to this problem.1

This paper illustrates the outcomes of a research project in integration of multimedia courseware in modular fixturing concepts, in which the traditional lecture on this topic was replaced by a multimedia courseware. ToolTRAIN© software was used in the area of MET and IT courses at Western Washington University, South Dakota State University and Millersville University to determine if this was a more useful learning experience for MET and IT students.

ToolTRAIN© Plus Software The original concept to develop the courseware evolved from an interest in courseware applications for manufacturing technology curriculum2. There were no courseware tools found for tooling and fixture design applications available for educators and the project to fill this void was initiated. ToolTRAIN© Plus is the most recent version of this courseware. Although multimedia tutorials and courseware tools can greatly enhance learning in ways that traditional instruction can not3, poor design of the tutorial and user interface (e.g., tutorial fails to run from the CD, or is incompatible across multiple operating system platforms) can limit its use by students4. ToolTRAIN© Plus addresses these issues and was developed to use with Windows 2000 and XP (tested on both versions), and the user interface was developed for ease of use.

ToolTRAIN’s instruction system contains four main units: (1) Modular Fixturing; (2) Components; (3) Implementation; and (4) Quiz. A hierarchy diagram of tutorial content is shown in Figure 1. The lessons are delivered in a step-by-step format that allows students to repeatedly review the modular tooling concepts in each unit until they have achieved understanding. The sublevels of the courseware are intuitive and navigation is straightforward5.

Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education

• Citation

• Format
  • APA
  • APA - LaTeX bibitem
  • MLA
  • MLA - LaTeX bibitem
  • Bibtex
  • EndNote - RIS

Vahradian, H., & O'Charoen, V., & Hall, T. (2005, June), A Modified Case Study: Using Multimedia Courseware To Teach Modular Fixturing Paper presented at 2005 Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--15400