Design approaches and comparison of TAPS packages for engineering

Abstract

The paper's purpose is to promote the use of modern technologies such as multimedia packages to engineering students. The aim is to help them to learning in their learning, visualization, problem solving and understanding engineering concepts such as in mechanics dynamics. TAPS packages are developed to help students solve selected engineering problems in a step-by-step approach. A comparison is made with existing commercial engineering packages to see if TAPS packages could further enhance the learning process. The differences found were indicative of better presentation and clarity, step-by-step approach to solve engineering problems, user-friendly environment, unbiased assessment of performance and flexibility to incorporate 3-D geometric models in the TAPS packages. The TAPS packages were compared with two commercial engineering packages and were based on a small number of users. A larger sample size of students would be required to see if TAPS packages are productive enough to be used locally in Malaysian universities and higher learning institutions. The main originality of the paper can be seen from the development of the TAPS packages and the comparative study with existing commercial engineering packages. The differences found are explained in details in this paper. © 2007, Emerald Group Publishing Limited