Interactive Teaching and Learning Platform for Numerical Methods in Energy

Abstract

1 Visiting Professor, ivan@egi.kth.se 2 Professor, fellow ASME, fransson@egi.kth.se 3 Graduate student, marianne@egi.kth.se 4 Kungliga Tekniska Hogskolan, Royal Institute of Technology 5 Assoc. Professor, NKU, kalion@svitonline.com ABSTRACT Interactive learning platform for energy technology in a global life-long learning perspective has been used for lecturing as well as for self-study by students in a few courses at the Energy Technology Dept. at KTH (Fig. 1). The main objective of the platform is to enhance the learning by providing to the students and teachers the necessary multimedia tools. This has been done through the use of a platform in which the information has been collected, processed and presented in a pedagogical way using several multimedia advantages. The computerized platform contains theoretical sections in the form of several e-pages for each available chapter, with a significant number of related interactive simulations, movies, animations, virtual laboratory exercises, study visits and realistic case studies. Significant background information related to historical development in the field, a display of existing components, nomenclature, multi-lingual dictionary and keywords, as well as questions for self-assessment and exams, an electronic communication group and a local database of the user's “successes and failures”, enhance the learning process in a significant way. The program is intended as a platform for an international collaboration on learning energy technology. It can be used both in the classroom as well as for selfstudies and is as such well adapted for both university and post-university learning, both on and off campus. Tools to facilitate the introduction of new material exist. It is thus hoped that teachers at different universities can join forces and in a non-competitive way introduce material, which can be shared, instead of developing similar simulations with somewhat different interfaces. In this paper, some new chapters and an e-book related to numerical methods for solution of boundaryvalue problems for partial differential equations, recently developed in the above mentioned platform are presented and discussed. The interactive learning platform gives advantages in a learning and teaching of numerical methods, such as animated solutions of the boundary problems, which show peculiarities for different types of partial differential equations (PDEs), different boundary conditions and numerical schemes for solution of the boundary-value problems. For example, specific properties of different numerical schemes such as stability, accuracy, convergence, etc. are available for instant proof in the practical training by student. The experience showed that students could easy understand the basics presented in short screen forms, which contain the additional information in the form of hypertext (popup). Through the hyperlinks they can access the details described in popup windows or hypertext windows. This is the second level. Then the students can get the whole ebook according with the subject chosen, which is describing all the details like a classical paper book.