This grant provides funding for the development of an internet-based electronic forum and workshop for design and manufacturing education. The electronic forum and workshop will provide organization and focus for the growing body of research data, information and materials created by educators and industry professionals. A network-centric approach will help ensure that those materials are more widely accessible, and interactive aspects of the forum and workshop system will foster opportunities for expanded dialogue and interaction among faculty, students and organizations interested in design and manufacturing education. The forum will also be a place where faculty, students and industry can organize and coordinate a wide variety of collaborative activities, develop and exchange course materials, and share resources and information that will enrich the engineering educational experience. The electronically publishable results of the many Technology Reinvestment Projects manufacturing engineering education partnerships will provide initial content and motivation for organizing electronic workshops; these resources will be expanded and encompass a broad spectrum of resources from those involved and interested in manufacturing education. The design, development and conduct of an electronic community provides a unique research opportunity for faculty and students, and a major objective is to ensure that knowledge about development and conduct of electronic forums is broadly available to individuals or groups wishing to establish similar kinds of communications infrastructures. Although electronic forum and workshop will be developed for initial use by the engineering community concerned with design and manufacturing education issues, the software, data structures, tools and operational guidelines for operation of the system will be designed in a content-neutral manner. By changing appropriate configuration parameters, other disciplines and groups will be able to deploy an instance of the electronic forum and workshop framework to support their unique network-mediated dialogue and seminars and create specialized databases and rich subject-specific resources for sharing and exchange within their community of interest.
