Project:  An Advanced Educational Module to Study Wave Propagation

PI(s):  Pedro Arduino, and Greg Miller

Sponsor:  PEER-NSF

Objective:   To develop and educational module to introduce graduate and undergraduate students to fundamental and advanced concepts of wave propagation in homogeneous and layered media. The module will be designed to integrate instruction and interaction simulation such that students will be able to visualize and actively explore the relevant phenomena as they are introduced and studied. The scope will be limited primarely to 1-D problems, but will nevertheless include both simple and advanced concepts and classes of behavior.

Research Approach:   We propose to address this project by means of an approach we have found successful in related engineering instructional contexts: combining a rich modeling environment with a multi-faceted contextual framework to support both guided instruction and student-centered exploration. The modeling environment will be computer-based, and will provide general capabilities for direct model creation, manipulation, and visualization along with an annotation mechanism to allow embedding similar to what one might typically associate with multimedia. Unlike typical multimedia, though, in this case content can be integrated into the analysis tool rather than the other way around.

The contextual framework will consist of text and equation materials akin to a typical lecture notes/textbook chapter package, a set of exercises and activities designed around the modeling environment, and a set of illustrations built into the modeling environment itself. The text-based materials will be constructed for web-based dissemination, either directly as html files, or as pdf files for creating hardcopy.

The challenge to making this work is in the development of a suitably general analysis tool that provides an essentially real-time response to a student's actions. Together, the P.I.'s have extensive experience in creating such tools and in modeling wave propagation, and so much of the development work will involve combining and adapting existing code and capabilities- otherwise the proposed timeframe would not be realistic. The initial code development will proceed in Java to insure cross- platform compatibility, but performance issues may require a switch to C++ following the prototype stage.

For more information send E-Mail to: parduino@u.washington.edu, or gmiller@u.washington.edu