Author(s): Wolfgang Huhnt; Felix Enge; Lukas Olbrich; Mirko Schankat; Reinhard Hinkelmann
Linked Author(s): Reinhard Hinkelmann, Mirko Schankat
Keywords: No Keywords
Abstract: The main goal of the project “Linked contents of teaching” is to introduce an interactive e-learning system to improve the quality of interdisciplinary teaching in civil engineering and therefore to increase the didactic surplus for students as well as teaching staff. To give students the opportunity to become professional engineers with a great expertise in linked fields of interest (e.g. Hydraulics, Soil Mechanics, Hydrology and Statistics), it is important to provide tools which are able to improve the understanding of the highly cross-linked knowledge in civil engineering-like the Internet-based system developed in this project. A curriculum of a civil engineering study program covers courses which are focused on quite different topics and are presented by specialized experts from different fields. However, the contents of the courses cannot be seen as being totally independent of each other, often they are even highly interdependent: Some topics can be based on the same basics, and other topics can be closely related to each other, because they are dealing with equivalent contents in different circumstances. The depiction and explanation of these interdependencies is necessary and helpful for students on the one hand, as recognitions and cross-references between courses help to understand and to learn. On the other hand the quality of teaching is enhanced, controlled and assured interactively for students as well as teaching staff. To present cross-links between teaching documents, the project “Linked contents of teaching” was initiated and an Internet-based learning-teaching-system has been developed. This server application presents suitable links of interdependencies between different documents. Binary relations are used to describe the interdependencies between contents which are presented in different documents and courses. The interdependencies are worked out as part of the project. The mathematical background of relational algebra is used to handle the relations.
Year: 2009