Towards a Community of Practice Concerning the Use of Adaptive Tutorials in Engineering Mechanics
Dror Ben-Naim, BGangadhara Prusty · 2010
This paper outlines current work that seeks to address persistent challenges in Engineering Mechanics education, through the development of Adaptive Tutorials that target threshold concepts in this field. Adaptive Tutorials are interactive online modules where an Intelligent Tutoring System adapts the instruction level to learners, based on their individual performance. Following a successful pilot study at UNSW, a new ALTC project has been launched, in which a team of Engineering Mechanics educators from a range of Australian universities explore the applicability of using Adaptive Tutorials in their teaching practice. In order to achieve adoption of this innovative educational technology, a novel strategy was developed which seeks to promote educators' pedagogical ownership over the Adaptive Tutorials through a community of practice. This paper focuses on the rationale behind that strategy.