Creating a Digital Homework Set for a Kinematics and Dynamics of Machinery Course
Dynamics of Machinery is a traditional engineering course; in fact kinematics was one of the earliest fields of study in engineering. The course relies on a strong combination of learning new theory and acquiring the skills to apply this theory through regular and repeated practice. This practice is commonly incorporated through homework sets, provided through a combination of book or instructor-given assignments. This homework includes testing conceptual understanding of key concepts, creating kinematic schematics, vector model construction, constructing equations, and performing mathematical analyses. The use of online, electronic tools for automating homework has been widely incorporated in K-12 education and in some college-level curriculum, but not, to the authors’ knowledge, significantly in a kinematics and dynamics of machinery class. This paper will present a framework for creating these problems, provide an overview of an entire set of problems associated with the common kinematics curriculum, and present an evaluation of this digitized coursework throughout four semesters of implementation.