Collaborative Research - Live Energy

The project is a collaboration involving Texas A&M University, Stanford University, The Pennsylvania State University, California State University Long Beach, and, Prairie View A&M University. The team of investigators is developing a continuously updated online textbook on energy sustainability to support core science and engineering courses for both majors and non majors. The project builds on an earlier NSF project in which attempts to develop a traditional textbook suggested the need for alternative educational material for such a dynamic and extensive field. This need is being met by an online resource that grows and is updated systematically as the knowledge base expands, using technologies that are not available in a typical printed textbook. The textbook addresses fossil, alternative, and renewable energy sources; energy conversions, utilization and extraction; and environmental impacts. The project goals are to: (1) implement collaborative technology that enables many content writers to work simultaneously (2) write the textbook content and assemble it in a form that is effective for each of the partner institutions, (3) assess the pedagogical value to student learning compared to that with a printed textbook, (4) conduct outreach to underrepresented groups in the K-12 teacher population as potential developers and users of the created on line content, and (5) disseminate the textbook itself and study results assessing its pedagogical value. Evaluation efforts, under the direction of an independent expert, are using an assortment of approaches to monitor (1) the impact of the online textbook on student content leaning, attitudes about energy and the engineering field, and learning skills with online resources; (2) the characteristics of faculty collaboration in developing online resources; and (3) the adoption of the developed resources. The Connexions website is being used to publicize and disseminate the textbook; evaluation results will be posted on the investigators' website, presented at engineering education conferences, and described in journal articles. Broader impacts include the collaboration among a diverse set of institutions, the focus on underrepresented groups in the K-12 outreach, and the dissemination of the material and evaluation results.