Discovery-Based Learning Engineering Classroom

Engineering design, optimization, and analysis practice in the 21st century is performed using complex computer models and graphical visualization of the results.Engineering education must also incorporate teaching and use of computer models for enhancing the depth and breadth of student learning.Today, we use a computer center to provide access to computers and educate engineering students to understand and apply engineering software such as AutoCAD, SolidWorks, Matlab, and Ansys, to name a few.Virtual environments provide the sensory experience of being in a computer generated, simulated space.They have potential uses in applications ranging from education and training to design and prototyping.An immersive environment simulates a virtual environment by "imbedding" the learner in an environment where "discovery" becomes part of learning.Therefore, we have chosen the term discovery learning where professors and students are enabled to "explore" through immersion, simulation, and animation.This article discusses the implementation of a Discovery Based Learning Classroom for Engineering courses.The Discovery-based Learning Center is a sophisticated viewing facility, theater, and lecture room for interactive real-time simulations of virtual models, environments, and processes.The center provides a unique laboratory/classroom environment for immersive interaction with models, environments, data, and processes in engineering and the sciences.The center merges teaching and research activities into a powerful discovery environment in which faculty and students share a problemsolving tool for exploration of any subject using methods that are impossible in a physical laboratory.The first course that will be implemented in the classroom is our freshman engineering problem solving/programming course using Matlab.The different phases of design and implementation of this very sophisticated classroom as well as the first semester teaching and learning experiences in this new environment are described in this article.