Robert W. Hendricks

Work in progress - transitioning Lab-in-a-Box (LiaB) to the community college setting

Building upon of a set of innovative hands-on laboratory courses developed at Virginia Tech (VT) known as Lab-in-a-Box (LiaB), LiaB is now being expanded to Virginia Community Colleges (VCCS) where faculty from VT and the VCCS are working to incorporate LiaB into the engineering and engineering technology programs. As implemented at VT, the students design, build, and test at home various d.c. and a.c. circuits using an inexpensive electronics and demonstrate the operation of these circuits in an open classroom environment. LiaB covers topics ranging from simple resistive circuits to filters and provides students a physical representation of models created in various circuit modeling software programs. Modifications to the way in which the students are engaged in the LiaB experiments have been instituted at three VCCS community colleges to tailor the laboratory experience to instructional environment at each school. Learning materials are under development, to support students to achieve a deeper depth of learning of the underlying circuit theory. Non-traditional dissemination avenues, such as podcasts and Flash tutorials, are being considered as a means to engage students in the learning process. Evaluation of the courses and learning materials and assessment of the learning outcomes at VT and at the three VCCS has recently begun.

An Intelligent Workstation for Stress Determination Using X-Ray Diffraction

Recent hardware developments of automated, high speed, portable X-ray diffraction stress analysis instrumentation have not yet resulted in widespread use of the technique in industry despite its potentials. We suggest that these hardware developments require an equivalent development in the training of instrument operators in order to guarantee the integrity of the resulting data, as well as to enhance the understanding of such materials characterization data. The hurdle to date is the variety of skills necessary in a wide range of scientific and engineering disciplines and which are not commonly found in a single individual. It is proposed that a computer-based system, integrating knowledge bases, visualization and analysis tools and which is focused on human performance can provide an efficient solution to this problem.