A learning outcome driven cyber infrastructure for thermodynamics education

The Web portal TEST, the Expert System for Thermodynamics (www.thermofluids.net) is a courseware that is being used in Engineering Thermodynamics classes by more than 2000 registered educators around the world. The courseware combines a number of resources: tables and charts, a library of animations covering every major topic, rich internet applications ("RIAs") for simulating important thermodynamic systems, thermodynamic calculators called daemons (named after Maxwell's daemon) to verify manual solution and pursue what-if studies, and sixteen chapters of multi-media problems and examples. In this work, we present an outcome driven approach to link various resources offered by this courseware to motivate a student to learn. For this purpose, we have associated 24 learning outcomes to engineering thermodynamics, a two-semester course in most universities. For each outcome, a fixed number of problems (10) are turned into key problems, designated by a key icon next to the problem description. As a student tries to solve a key problem, the outcomes fulfilled by the problem are displayed and the progress made by the student is monitored. On successful solution or after an unsuccessful attempt, a customized recommendation of resources - what to read, what animations to browse, what tables to search, what daemon and RIA to use, etc., is made. A student can keep track of his or her progress and estimate the work required to reach various proficiency levels on a given outcome. When a large number of students start using this system, it may become possible to track which resources are more helpful in thermodynamic problem solving. A potential benefit of this approach is direct assessment of student achievements with learning outcomes, an area of high emphasis from the ABET engineering accreditation board.