Use of screencasting to facilitate engineering course delivery

Abstract

The use of technology to enhance learning opportunities is increasing and interventions such as screencasting can have benefits in providing the student with a flexible learning resource. Within this study, a screencast tutorial was produced for engineering students to teach the process of modelling laminated materials within the commercial finite element software, ANSYS. The effectiveness of the screencast was assessed using an anonymous online questionnaire and small focus group discussion. Overall, feedback from students was positive and found that the majority of students preferred to use a dual learning approach by using the screencast along with an accompanying PDF step-by-step guide. It was also evident from both questionnaire and focus group responses that the instructor–learner interaction was still regarded by the students as an important aspect of the course delivery; especially for teaching advanced concepts when using finite element software.