Class Project

During the last third of the course, each student will design and build a class project using the concepts and tools discussed in this course. Students will be responsible for selecting their own project topic, but the result must be an information resource having the following characteristics:

1. The resource developed by each student must be designed to teach an engineering, or suitably technical concept or principle.

2. Each resource must be interactive in the sense that it should accept input from the user, and take action based on that input.

3. Each resource must have sufficient support mechanisms to allow the user to understand (1) the context for the learning that (s)he will undertake, and (2) exactly how to use the resource;

4. Each resource should display the results of analysis performed in a manner most appropriate for that application (tables, charts, graphs, figures, sound, etc.);

5. Each resource will be expected to adhere to appropriate HTML form and style, and projects will be graded from that perspective.

The heart of you project will be the analysis that is performed by one or more programs you will write that will interface to the Web through the common gateway interface (CGI). Lessons 6-10 will cover the main topics you will need to design and develop your resource. A set of project development guidelines will be posted regularly during the project period to help you develop your resources, and course staff will assist with programming problems that you might encounter.

Students should begin considering possible topics for development. Topics should:

• be well understood so you don't have to learn the concept at the same time you are trying to build a resource to teach it;

• not require extensive databases to be developed; the fewer data the better--the best projects are those requiring only the data input by the user;

• be as narrow in focus as possible, while still allowing you to demonstrate the knowledge and skills that you have learned in this class;

Students are encouraged to discuss possible topics with course staff at their convenience, and should have, by the end of Lesson 9, a clear idea of how they expect their resource to perform.

Some Example Projects

Below are listed areas for which projects hve been developed by former students. Checking within these areas, should give you some idea of topics and scope that meet most of the objectives set forth above.

• Environmental and Water Resources

• Geomatics and Spatial Modeling

• Optimization and Distance Modeling

• Geotechnical Engineering

• Structural Engineering

• Construction Engineering

• Statistics

• Materials Engineering

• Electrical Engineering

• Engineering Science

• Mechanical Engineering

• Economics Engineering

• 3-D Modeling (VRML)