LEARNING CASTING THROUGH INTERACTIVELY CREATING A SCENARIO

Students can learn more effectively when actively involved in the learning process. Traditional approach is mainly "teacher-centered" and lacks in nurturing the students' skills in today's changing world. Various non-traditional approaches, that are based on experiential learning, such as project-based, problem-based or case studies-based learning have been developed and found to improve student's learning concepts in engineering. Course modules that engage students can (i) stimulate active learning, (ii) prepare students to solve open-ended real-world problems in industries, and (iii) serve as a natural link to subsequent courses in the STEM disciplines. In this paper, we discuss Create your Scenario Interactively (CSI), which is being developed using Experiential Learning as a model to provide an engaging learning experience of engineering concepts by allowing students to visualize and interact with 2D/3D objects. A casting CSI module is being developed for a sophomore level manufacturing engineering course. We will discuss some initial research results on the CSI module development, implementation and evaluation plan for teaching manufacturing engineering course at University of Oklahoma and Tuskegee University. The pedagogical effectiveness of the CSI system will be evaluated by covering two different areas - (i) students' learning and (ii) usability of the CSI system.