Premier Courseware of 2010

Premier Courseware of 2010

Greenfoot Integrated Development Environment and Dynamics Animation were announced as the Premier Courseware of 2010 at the 2010 ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference on Friday, October 29, 2010 in Arlington, VA.

Greenfoot Integrated Development Environment

Poul Henriksen and Michael Kölling, University of Kent; Davin McCall and Marion Zalk, La Trobe University

The Greenfoot Integrated Development Environment is a pedagogical tool for teaching computer programming that allows students to use the full Java programming language to create games and simulations. The Greenfoot system greatly enhances student motivation while reinforcing Object-Oriented Programming concepts. Greenfoot is a resource that can be used by instructors to support their teaching of programming concepts through the use of animation and process scenarios. Students instantiate objects into an onscreen world and then create Java code that courses the object, generally a character related to the scenario, to perform certain actions and responses to other objects encountered in the surroundings. The Greenfoot Integrated Development Environment provides facilities for sharing programming resources and usage advice as well as to post finished programming projects that are of general and entertainment interest to student users.

Dynamics Animations

Richard Stanley, Kettering University

Dynamics Animations are interactive animation software for an introductory dynamics course. The web-based animation is directly linked to a dynamics assignment, and no programming is required of the user. The software is designed to guide students to expose and explore dynamics concepts—and misconceptions. The software provides considerable choice to the user regarding the depth of exploration. Novice students may vary only the required parameter to answer the question that is being asked. For more experienced students, faculty can ask more complicated questions involving the same scenarios; these advanced scenarios typically require changing additional parameters.

2010 Sponsors

About the Premier Award

The Premier Award for Excellence in Engineering Education Courseware was developed by NEEDS—A Digital Library for Engineering Education, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and the Synthesis Coalition to recognize high-quality, non-commercial courseware designed to enhance engineering education.