Using cyberinfrastructure to enhance product dissection in the classroom

Product dissection has been used successfully in a variety of ways to actively engage students in their learning; however, using product dissection in the classroom does have drawbacks: products, tools, and their upkeep can be costly, workspace and storage space can be difficult to obtain, and even the best crafted dissection assignments can end in chaos. Recent cyberinfrastructure initiatives being funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) have the potential to overcome many of these deterrents, and in this paper we discuss how Cyber-Infrastructure-Based Engineering Repositories for Undergraduates, or CIBER-U, is creating a cyberinfrastructure that will revolutionize product dissection activities, making them easier to implement in the classroom and broadening their appeal to larger audiences. CIBER-U combines product dissection activities at three universities with two digital design repositories, CAD modeling and animation, video, MediaWiki technology, multimedia, and undergraduate research experiences to enable cyberinfrastructure-based product dissection activities. This paper showcases the activities that have been developed and implemented over the past year as part of CIBER-U Ongoing work is also discussed.