Developing @ Sharing Internet Resources in the Education of Materials Science and Engineering

As the World Wide Web externd, multimedia and programming technologies are evolving to enable the development of instructional software for significant depth and interactivity. This article discusses the development and evolution of web-based tools to support introductory materials science courses and demonstrates how these tools (including QuickTime, Java, JavaScript and virtual reality modeling language) can be used for educational purposes. Such educational approaches with minor adjustment have been successfully integrated into introductory materials science courses in several institutions and have been very well received by lecturers and students. In light of this success, ways in which web-based content can be more widely distributed are more eagerly pursued and steps to optimize the structure and application of such resources are considered as the next stage in this educational process. In this article, issues motivating and arising from this sharing of educational resources are discussed, and a list of multimedia tools for materials science is also demonstrated. A brief review of the current condition of computational and simulation tools in materials science and engineering with introduction of two of the most utilized softwares in this discipline are also presented.