Digital Imaging and the Web in
Teaching Civil Engineering
A presentation to the Department of Civil Engineering
University of Hong Kong
January 6, 1999
Kirk Martini
Assistant Professor of Architecture and Civil Engineering
University of Virginia
Overview
Examples
Degrees of adoption
Review a few methods in approximate order of difficulty
Easy (relatively)
- Posting text information
- Lecture summary points
- Assignments
- Including images downloaded from Internet sources
- Combining with WEBCT facilities
Disadvantages
- Moderate time required to learn new tools
Benefits
- Text tools are similar to word processors
- There are some excellent sources of images on the Internet
- WEBCT can help with other aspects of administration
A little harder
- Annotating downloaded images
- Scanning images
- Student assistants
- Media Center
- Combining images and text with WEBCT forms to create assignments
Disadvantages
- Time required to learn new tools is more significant
- Photoshop
- Image file formats
Benefits
- More images available to use
- More powerful graphic explanations
- Knowledge and tools for image processing can often be applied to research
Quite a bit harder
- Video and animation
- Software Development (Java Applets)
- Custom forms (CGI Programming)
Disadvantages
- Still more time to learn tools and methods
- Costly equipment and software for video
- Software development is highly time consuming
Benefits
Recommendations