Websites such as gitbook can create a dynamic learning environment for reviewing course content.
What this course teaches
Here, I have written an example of how this may look like. The course teaches students to develop their own building simulation tool using python. By doing so the student will learn
– How to program in Python
– Basic applied thermodynamics
– How to solve thermal circuits
– Basic mathematical integration
– How to build their own simulation tool
Benefits of this style of material
This course can be taught entirely without instruction. The software allows students to
– Comment directly on the lines of text where they are confused. The questions are gathered in a list that the teacher and other students can see
– Solve problems directly in the text with direct feedback. See the bottom of page 2
– Have inbuilt youtube videos so video instruction can be combined with the text
– Embed code which can be copied and pasted
In this example, the student should teach themselves without complementary lectures. But in principle, this could be expanded to lecture material.
Time taken
So far, this document has taken me 6 hours to create, including the figures and code. It is not yet complete
Issues
There are still some bugs in the program. For example, the equations do not show without the browser being refreshed. However, with some work, this style of lecture documentation can be quite useful.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
– Prageeth Jayathissa (PJ)
