An Interactive Textbook for Introductory Engineering Design

Jeffrey Donnell, William Singhose and Arto Kivila

The George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, The Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A.

Keywords:

Interactive Textbook, iPad, Touchscreen Computer, iBooks, Science Education, Engineering Education.

Abstract:

Touchscreen computers hold great promise as educational tools. Many universities, high schools and elemen-

tary schools are working to create curricula that exploit these devices. An important part of this work is the

development of textbooks that move away from the static display of words and ﬁgures to include interactive

components such as videos and interactive simulations. We present such an interactive textbook, developed for

an undergraduate course in mechanical engineering. We describe the course for which it was developed and the

interactive components of the book. Student evaluations of the textbook are presented and discussed. Finally,

we offer suggestions for additional steps that can improve interactive textbooks for use on tablet computers.

1 INTRODUCTION

Instructors in science and engineering courses rely on

textbooks. Textbooks aid instructors in organizing

material, they provide students with information that

cannot be covered in lectures, and they provide exam-

ples that should assist students in solving homework

problems. However, science and engineering students

frequently express dissatisfaction with their textbooks

and commonly ignore them. Numerous studies of

introductory physics courses show that undergradu-

ate students complain about the cost of their assigned

textbooks, and that they seldom read these textbooks,

leaving them poorly prepared to understand their

technical lectures (Stelzer et al., 2009), (Podolefsky

and Finkelstein, 2006), (Chen et al., 2010). Much

recent innovation in classroom methods and technol-

ogy addresses this problem of student motivation and

preparation in the sciences.

This issue of student preparation is commonly

treated as a problem of engagement with the text-

books and the material. Many instructors have ap-

proached this problem by adjusting the way they man-

age their classrooms (Brewe, 2008), (Laws et al.,

1999), while others have explored technology to

promote active learning and engagement. Zacharia

and Anderson (Zacharia and Anderson, 2003) devel-

oped computer simulations to address speciﬁc stu-

dent misperceptions. These simulations were inte-

grated with laboratory exercises and produced a posi-

tive impact on student learning. Bonham et al. (Bon-

ham et al., 2003) introduced computer grading for

physics homework problems and obtained positive re-

sults in student satisfaction, as well as student per-

formance. Although the grading system did not pro-

vide problem-solving guidance, the system responded

quickly enough to enable students to identify and cor-

rect their own errors.

Textbook publishers have approached the en-

gagement problem by adding electronic supple-

ments to their textbooks. Cengage Learning

(www.cengage.com), for example, provides web sup-

plements for some of its print textbooks, and at least

some of the electronic textbooks produced by Pearson

Publishing (www.pearson.com) are integrated with

websites. However, our experiences with commercial

e-textbook web supplements have been disappointing,

as supplementary resources appear still to be in early

stages of development.

To address the problem of student engagement

with textbooks, we have chosen to move away from

the resources provided by traditional publishers and

towards mobile touchscreen devices such as iPads.

These devices are poised to have a signiﬁcant im-

pact on the way textbooks are prepared and used in

college science and engineering courses. In experi-

ments with notebooks and tablet computers, for ex-

ample, instructors have found iPads to be very effec-

tive classroom tools when projects can be developed

and programmed entirely on the devices (Liu et al.,

2011). When class-speciﬁc resources are not devel-

oped on the tablet devices, students have been found

to enjoy classes that provide them with, for example,

iPads, even though the devices themselves have not

174

Donnell J., Singhose W. and Kivila A..

An Interactive Textbook for Introductory Engineering Design.

DOI: 10.5220/0004763601740181

In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2014), pages 174-181

ISBN: 978-989-758-020-8

 2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

had a demonstrable impact on student learning (Perez

and Paso, 2012), (Perez et al., 2011), (Sloan, 2012),

(Van Oostveen et al., 2011), (Weisberg, 2011).

Student engagement may be a function of how

richly a tablet device addresses the students’ activi-

ties in a class. As yet, few textbooks have been devel-

oped that exploit computers” ability to provide inter-

active demonstrations and exercises for the students.

It has been argued that publishers have been reluctant

to reconceive and redevelop their textbooks to pro-

vide such interactivity; Chesser suggests that publish-

ers prefer to port existing books to the tablet devices

simply as page images or pdfs (Chesser, 2011). This

under-utilizes the computer’s ability to provide com-

pelling educational resources to the student. To take

advantage of the iPad’s potential to engage students,

we think that it is important to provide interactive

supplements, including simulations, video clips, and

homework tools. To directly engage students, these

interactive supplements should be tailored for the sub-

ject matter of the class, and the book into which they

are integrated should speak to student concerns about

expense, convenience, and pertinence (Acker, 2011),

(Hellman, 2011).

In this paper, we present an electronic textbook

that takes steps towards that goal. Our textbook pro-

vides simulations that respond to student input, it pro-

vides video demonstrations, drawings that the stu-

dents can manipulate, and design planning tools that

students can modify. We have developed this book in

an effort to stimulate student engagement while keep-

ing costs low. We will describe the course in which

our interactive textbook is used, the particular interac-

tive features that we consider to be novel for textbook

authors and compelling for students. We will present

student evaluations of this interactive textbook, and

we will comment on the future path of development

for interactive textbooks.

2 AN UNDERGRADUATE

ENGINEERING CLASS

Our interactive textbook was developed for the course

Creative Decisions and Design, a sophomore-level

engineering design course at Georgia Tech. Enroll-

ment is commonly over 200 students per term, but

the students are grouped into studio sections that typ-

ically have 20 students per section. The course in-

troduces engineering students to a set of simple tools

that address engineering design, teamwork and tech-

nical communication. These tools include charts that

students ﬁll out in order to better understand the de-

sign problem, to partition the problem and to develop

conceptual solutions. The tools also include evalua-

tion matrices that support orderly comparison of de-

sign concepts. We present these tools in lectures, then

students use them to address design projects of in-

creasing complexity. The student project work culmi-

nates in the design and fabrication of a mechatronic

device using electronic components that we supply.

Students demonstrate their devices in an end-of-term

design contest. The course has a technical communi-

cation component, such that student designs are eval-

uated according to their presentation in written re-

ports. While student tournament scores are factored

into their grades, their grades depend heavily on the

written and oral presentation of their work.

Before tablet devices became widespread, the au-

thors developed a print textbook, which was used

in this class for several years. As iPads became

widespread, we chose to redevelop the print textbook

for display on iPads, with the goal of developing sup-

plementary interactive elements to augment the pre-

sentation the course material.

3 DEVELOPMENT OF AN

INTERACTIVE TEXTBOOK

To convert our print textbook to an electronic book,

we chose to use the editor iBooks Author, as it ac-

commodates a large variety of display types and it is

relatively easy to use. This program enables authors

to insert the usual array of static displays, such as,

photo galleries, presentation slides, and photos with

interactive labels. It also allows authors to insert more

visually compelling displays, such as videos and 3-

Dimensional interactive images that readers can ma-

nipulate. Most importantly, it also allows authors to

develop and deploy interactive components of their

own design. In the following, we present and brieﬂy

discuss the interactive elements that we have added to

this textbook.

3.1 Photo Galleries

Engineering students and professionals rely on pho-

tographs to document designs and to explain events.

Engineering textbooks naturally rely on photographs,

and instructors often wish to use their own pho-

tographs in the classrooms. In our textbook, we chose

to use our own photographs because they illustrate

our particular approach to the classroom topics and

because they illustrate acceptable technical photogra-

phy. The iBooks Author editor makes it very easy for

instructors to add and rearrange photographs in the

textbook.

AnInteractiveTextbookforIntroductoryEngineeringDesign

175

The simplest interactive display provided in

iBooks Author is a photo gallery, an example of which

is shown in Figure 1. A selected ﬁgure is shown in

the large, upper frame on the right side. Below it is

a gallery of thumbnail images, showing other ﬁgures

that are available for the reader to select. Galleries

such as this save space, as they allow authors to as-

semble numerous photographs (or other images) in a

single spot. This is good for readers, as it assures that

photographs will always be displayed on the pages

where they are cited. This is useful in engineering

and science textbooks, where students are often asked

to view groups or sequences of displays in order to

identify trends or to understand complex concepts.

Figure 1: Photo gallery with four images.

3.2 Three-Dimensional Interactive

Displays

Three-dimensional displays are particularly important

in engineering classes, where students must visual-

ize complex systems. In our class, students are ex-

pected to prepare professional-quality drawings and

to learn how to understand drawings prepared by

others. Engineering students are trained to prepare

and use three-dimensional drawings, so the inability

of print textbooks to accommodate 3-D displays has

been a signiﬁcant limitation for students and teachers

alike.

Figure 2 shows three views of a 3-Dimensional

drawing of a Segway personal transporter. As pre-

sented in our interactive book, this 3-Dimensional

drawing can be rotated. View (a) is the appearance

of the drawing upon activation by the user. In views

(b) and (c), the user has rotated the drawing with a

ﬁnger swipe. Using this interactive capability, users

can examine objects from any angle, a capability that

could never be achieved with a print textbook.

Figure 2: Various stages of an interactive 3-D drawing.

3.3 Embedded Video

Video is a powerful classroom resource because it can

provide demonstrations that are more vivid than an

instructor’s descriptive words. Instructors in science

and engineering courses now commonly post video

demonstrations on websites. iBook tools allow in-

CSEDU2014-6thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation

176

structors to embed such videos in the students’ text-

books and to upgrade these easily as topics change

each term. Figure 3 shows three frames from one of

the many videos that we have inserted in our iBook.

It shows one of our studio instructors falling from a

Segway Personal Transporter, and it is used as part of

an introductory project to help students develop cus-

tomer requirements for the design of a personal trans-

porter of their own.

Figure 3: Frames from an embedded video.

3.4 Real-time Interactive Simulations

Real-time simulations can be as powerful as video

demonstrations in improving student engagement

with scientiﬁc subjects. The primary limitation of any

print textbook is that the student must imagine how

things move and change while looking at single im-

ages, diagrams or plots. iBooks Author enables users

to code working interactive simulations that students

can operate from the pages of their textbooks. In this

section, we present two such simulations that we de-

veloped at Georgia Tech. One of these represents a

bridge crane with a swinging payload, and the other

represents an inverted pendulum. In each simulation,

the user is asked to move the payload to a target area.

Figure 4 is a screen shot of the textbook show-

ing a 3-D interactive drawing of a crane on the right

side. On the left side is an interactive, real-time simu-

lation of a bridge crane. In Figure 5, three screenshots

show this simulation in use. It demonstrates the op-

erator’s challenge in controlling a swinging payload.

At the top of the screen is a box-like representation of

a crane trolley to which a square payload is attached

via a cable. At the bottom of the screen are orange

input buttons that allow the user to raise and lower

the payload. Green input buttons move the crane left

and right. When users press these control buttons, the

crane moves, and the payload swings.

In this simulation, the payload movements are

physically correct; the swing frequency changes as

the payload is raised or lowered and as the crane

is moved left and right. A user can reduce or in-

crease the payloads swing by moving the trolley into

or against the payload swings and by raising or lower-

ing the payload. To make the exercise interesting and

goal oriented, we have provided the users with an ob-

jective; they must deliver the payload to a target box

marked by red lines at the right of the screen. A timer

allows users to score themselves and to compete with

friends.

Figure 4: Page with crane simulation and 3-D drawing.

This simulation was developed in the Apple Dash-

code environment. The resulting program was then

exported as a widget, which is a small HTML snip-

pet that functions like a mini webpage upon integra-

tion into an electronic book. This development point

is signiﬁcant; many faculty members have developed

simulations as part of their work; our work demon-

strates that these can be developed into compelling

displays in electronic textbooks.

Figure 6 shows three screen shots of a related real-

time simulation that is used in our textbook: an in-

verted pendulum. This simulation was developed to

complement the crane simulation and to illustrate that

the problem of controlling an inverted pendulum is

AnInteractiveTextbookforIntroductoryEngineeringDesign

177

Figure 5: Real-time simulation of crane control.

more difﬁcult than that of controlling the pendulum

swing of a crane payload. This simulation is used in a

class study of a commercially available inverted pen-

dulum: the Segway Personal Transporter.

In this simulation, the user is challenged to do

what a Segway control system is designed to do:

maintain the mass stably above the center of gravity

and transport it to a target, which is represented as

the red area at the center of the screen. To do this,

Figure 6: Real-time simulation of segway control.

the user must control the blue pivot point below the

mass; this is done by using two green input buttons at

the bottom of the screen to move the pivot point left

and right. As is the case for the crane simulation, the

behavior of the system is physically correct; the mass

tends to fall when the blue pivot point moves away

from the position directly below the mass.

Figure 7(a) shows the starting point for this sim-

ulation, with the weight positioned stably above the

pivot point. In Figure 7(b), the pivot point has been

moved below the red target zone, and the weight,

tipped to the left, appears to be falling away from the

target zone. In Figure 7(c), the weight is in the target

area but falling to the right.

Simulations such as this are crucial for interactive

textbooks in the science and engineering domains.

They offer realistic representations of complex con-

cepts, and they provide students with a form of hands-

on learning. By allowing students to vary the param-

eters that drive the simulation, tools like this allow

students to explore systems in a way that text expla-

nations cannot reproduce. Further, when complemen-

CSEDU2014-6thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation

178

tary simulations are paired, as here, students may gain

deeper insight into the concepts that are being illus-

trated. We feel that interactive simulations such as

this should be used as often as possible in textbooks

for science and engineering students. We believe that

authors and publishers should treat this as a priority as

they develop textbooks for use on electronic devices.

3.5 Interactive Planning Tools

In addition to designing devices, engineering students

learn to use a formal process of deﬁning problems,

developing designs, and evaluating design concepts.

To guide students through these steps, design courses

teach students to prepare a number of planning tools.

These tools are specialized ﬂowcharts and tables, with

variations in layout that accommodate the designers’

needs at different stages of the design process. We

ask students to prepare planning tools in order ﬁrst

to insure that design decisions are made in an orderly

process, and second in order to create records of their

design decisions for later reference. We developed

these interactive charts to give the students a simple

but fast way to learn how the tools work before they

begin work on their own charts.

The ﬁrst of these interactive planning tools is the

Morphological Chart, or ”Morph Chart,” shown in

Figure 7. In a Morphological Chart a designer dis-

plays a set of possible design solutions, organized by

subfunctions. In this way, the Morph Chart presents

all of the possible combinations of ideas for a design

project, and designers can develop system design con-

cepts by integrating subsystem components from the

Morph Chart.

In the interactive Morph Chart of Figure 8, a sim-

pliﬁed list of system subfunctions is shown in the row

headings on the left, and diagrams of possible solu-

tions are aligned in the matrix of the chart. In this in-

teractive chart, students can brainstorm possible sys-

tem designs by directly selecting solutions from the

matrix; a possible system conﬁguration is then assem-

bled at the bottom of the display. The concept system

display changes each time the user selects or changes

a solution; Figures 8(a) through 8(c) show that the

display highlights the selections as the user builds a

system concept. Using a tool such as this, a user can

create a large number of different design concepts.

While interactive simulations are useful for teach-

ing technical concepts, interactive charts are useful

for teaching the planning and record-keeping com-

ponents of engineering projects. Design tools such

as the Morphological Chart are fundamental to the

mechanical design process as we teach it at Georgia

Tech. We believe that they guide students into making

Figure 7: Interactive Morph Chart.

good decisions. By making these tools interactive, we

have made them more interesting to learn and more

convenient to use.

4 ASSESSMENT

To assess the how well the iBook text engaged the

students, we developed a survey to determine whether

the students found the book to be useful and to deter-

mine which interactive tools, if any, were of greatest

interest to them. The survey asked students ﬁrst to as-

sess, on a scale of 1 to 5, the usefulness of the iBook,

and second to assess, on a scale of 1 to 5, the useful-

ness of the interactive features in general. For both

questions, a response of 1 meant ”Very Useful,” and

AnInteractiveTextbookforIntroductoryEngineeringDesign

179

a response of 5 meant ”Not Useful”; a response of 3

meant ”No Opinion.” In a third question, we asked

the students to rank the utility of four of the interac-

tive elements on a scale of 1 to 4, with 1 being the

most useful and 4 being the least useful.

Over the course of two terms, we distributed iPads

with the iBook textbook, to four studio sections with a

total of 80 students enrolled. Of these, 45 students re-

turned completed survey forms to us. Of these, 82%,

(37 of 45 students) responded positively, ﬁnding the

book to be useful or very useful. Three of 45 students

(6%) responded negatively, ﬁnding the book to be not

useful or not very useful. Five of the 45 students, or

11%, gave a neutral response of no opinion.

When asked to evaluate whether the interactive el-

ements were useful, 68% of the respondents (31 of 45

students) rated these to be useful or very useful while

3 students (6%) rated them as not useful or not very

useful. Eleven of the 45 students (11%) gave a neu-

tral response of no opinion. These survey results are

displayed in Table 1.

Table 1: Evaluation of Textbook and Interactives, Most

Useful to Least Useful.

1 2 3 4 5

Textbook 14 23 5 0 3

Interactives 11 20 11 2 1

To establish the relative utility of the interactive

components of the book, we asked students to rank

the embedded videos, interactive 3-D drawings, inter-

active simulations and interactive charts. Here, stu-

dents ranked the interactive charts as most useful and

embedded videos as least useful, with 3-D drawings

and interactive simulations tied in the middle. The

complete response set is shown in Table 2. The dis-

tinctions are small in our survey results, however, and

it may be that the different types of displays appeal to

different groups of students in a large class.

Table 2: Student Ranking of Interactives Best to Worst.

1 2 3 4

Videos 9 7 12 13

3-D Drawings 6 13 12 10

Simulations 9 12 12 8

Charts 16 7 5 13

The print version of the textbook, of course, pro-

vides no interactive elements to which these results

can be compared. The print text offers design tools in

static form, and students using the print textbook did

ﬁnd value in these displays; 173 students responded

to our survey question regarding the usefulness of the

textbook, and 80% of respondents assessed these as

“Useful” or “Very Useful,” while no users gave nega-

tive responses. These responses are similiar to those

obtained for the interactive textbook, and this calls for

further investigation into the way that examples are

prepared and displayed in print and interactive forms.

5 DISCUSSION AND FUTURE

DIRECTIONS

Our survey results demonstrate that students respond

positively to electronic textbooks, and we believe

that the interactive elements are important to this re-

sponse. To make our interactive elements compelling,

we have made them rich with information related to

our class topics. While we have not yet relates text-

book use to student learning, our results suggest that

this textbook has had an impact on the problem of stu-

dent engagement.

The current interactive textbook can be viewed as

a proof of concept version, and it is reasonable to seek

ways to augment it. Generally, we seek new ways for

students to interact with our displays. One path of

development is to enable students to edit and export

the interactive tools for use in other programs. Stu-

dents might open and modify a 3-D drawing as part

of an assignment, for example. Or, our Morphologi-

cal Chart might be integrated with a drawing tool that

would allow students to create, integrate, and evaluate

design concepts from within the book’s pages.

In the same fashion, the current tools for editing

and organizing reports do not yet provide options for

students to test their own ideas for writing and editing.

To make such writing and editing tools more richly in-

teractive it will be necessary to integrate them with an

Automated Essay Scoring system that provides real

time feedback on the students’ written written work.

6 CONCLUSIONS

Our results indicate that students responded positively

to this interactive textbook, and to the particular in-

teractive displays that were included in it. These re-

sponses are signiﬁcant because they show that the cre-

ating interactive textbooks enables instructors to re-

spond to the problem of student engagement indepen-

dently and relatively easily. With tools that are eas-

ily available, instructors in science and engineering

courses can develop textbooks that have a positive im-

pact on their students’ engagement.

CSEDU2014-6thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation

180

REFERENCES

Acker, S. R. (2011). Chapter 6: Digital textbooks. Library

Technology Reports, 47(8):41–51.

Bonham, S. W., Deardorff, D. L., and Beichner, R. J.

(2003). Comparison of student performance us-

ing web and paper-based homework in college-level

physics. Journal of Research in Science Teaching,

40(10):1050–1071.

Brewe, E. (2008). Modeling theory applied: Modeling in-

struction in introductory physics. American Journal

of physics, 76:1155.

Chen, Z., Stelzer, T., and Gladding, G. (2010). Using multi-

media modules to better prepare students for introduc-

tory physics lecture. Physical Review Special Topics-

Physics Education Research, 6(1):010108.

Chesser, W. D. (2011). Chapter 5: The e-textbook revolu-

tion. Library Technology Reports, 47(8):28–40.

Hellman, E. (2011). Chapter 4: Open access e-books. Li-

brary Technology Reports, 47(8):18–27.

Laws, P. W., Rosborough, P. J., and Poodry, F. J. (1999).

Women’s responses to an activity-based introduc-

tory physics program. American Journal of Physics,

67:S32.

Liu, J., Spanias, A., Banavar, M., Thiagarajan, J., Rama-

murthy, K., and Hu, S. (2011). iphone/ipad based

interactive laboratory for signal processing in mobile

devices. In Proeedings of the 2011 ASEE Annual Con-

ference & Exposition.

McCannAssociates (2013). My Access!

College Edition.

http://www.mccanntesting.com/login/my-access-

college-edition/. Accessed 4 August 2013.

Perez, O. A., Gonzalez, V., and Golding, P. (2011). Work

in progress–analysis of mobile technology impact on

stem-based courses, speciﬁcally introduction to engi-

neering in the era of the ipad. In Proeedings of the

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition.

Perez, O. A. and Paso, E. (2012). Analysis of mobile tech-

nology impact on stem-based courses, speciﬁcally in-

troduction to engineering in the era of the ipad. In

Proeedings of the 2012 ASEE Annual Conference &

Exposition.

Podolefsky, N. and Finkelstein, N. (2006). The perceived

value of college physics textbooks: Students and in-

structors may not see eye to eye. The Physics Teacher,

44:338.

Sloan, R. H. (2012). Using an e-textbook and ipad: Results

of a pilot program. Journal of Educational Technology

Systems, 41(1):87–104.

Stelzer, T., Gladding, G., Mestre, J. P., and Brookes, D. T.

(2009). Comparing the efﬁcacy of multimedia mod-

ules with traditional textbooks for learning introduc-

tory physics content. American Journal of Physics,

77:184.

Van Oostveen, R., Muirhead, W., and Goodman, W. M.

(2011). Tablet pcs and reconceptualizing learning

with technology: a case study in higher education. In-

teractive Technology and Smart Education, 8(2):78–

93.

Weisberg, M. (2011). Student attitudes and behaviors to-

wards digital textbooks. Publishing Research Quar-

terly, 27(2):188–196.

Zacharia, Z. and Anderson, O. R. (2003). The effects of

an interactive computer-based simulation prior to per-

forming a laboratory inquiry-based experiment on stu-

dents conceptual understanding of physics. American

Journal of Physics, 71:618.

AnInteractiveTextbookforIntroductoryEngineeringDesign

181