The value of the Adaptive Mechanics Network is in its community of members: experts just like you, sharing rich, interactive and adaptive courseware and expertise to build the future of engineering education.
“The Adaptive Mechanics Network is an invaluable resource that will allow students to have as close as possible, an authentic tutorial experience from anywhere in the world. The network has the capacity to enrich mechanics driven engineering programs such as Civil and Mechanical Engineering through the sharing of best teaching practice. This adaptive learning platform has great potential in making online learning programs more exciting and successful in enhancing the student experience.”
Associate Professor Fidelis Mashiri
Civil Engineering (Structural Engineering)
University of Western Sydney
Professor Ganga Prusty
Gangadhara is a Professor in the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at UNSW and has contributed significantly to the enhancement of student learning. Using a blend of traditional and contemporary teaching methods, he has helped students understand the key threshold concepts of the mechanics courses effectively. He has received multiple teaching excellence awards, including Australian Awards for Teaching, Australian Council of Engineering Deans Award for Engineering Education Excellence, UNSW Vice Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence Award, National Citation Award by Australian Learning & Teaching Council (ALTC) for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning and the 2010 Lecturer of the Year award. He pioneered the Adaptive eLearning technologies with traditional teaching in novel ways to help net-gen students in large engineering classes. His teaching development has been taken up by students and academics at the national and international universities.
Anne Gardner
Anne has significant experience in guiding civil engineering students at UTS in learning mechanics and structural design as well as contributing to the professional practice subjects in the engineering program at UTS. Anne’s educational research interests include learning and teaching of engineering mechanics, and learning through collaborative activities including self and peer assessment. She was a project team member on a previous ALTC project concerning mechanics: A Pro-Active Approach to Addressing Student Learning Diversity in Engineering Mechanics. Anne is also involved in the development of the online assessment tool SPARKPLUS. She was a member of the AaeE Executive Committee from 2007 – 2010. In 2009 she was awarded a UTS Team Teaching Award and in 2010 was awarded an ALTC Citation and the AaeE Teaching Excellence Award.
Dr Zora Vrcelj
Dr Zora Vrcelj completed a BE (Hons 1, 1999) in Civil engineering from the University of Wollongong, followed by a PhD degree (2004) at the University of New South Wales. She is currently a senior lecturer in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her current main research interests are composite steel-concrete construction, the stability of steel structures, biomimetics and innovations in structural engineering education.
Dr Robin Ford
In thirty years at The School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering Robin Ford’s many innovations included the award-winning “First year Labweek” (with Dr T Barber). He was Director of Teaching in the School, and for the Faculty coordinated the development and first implementations of its common 1st year Design course for over nine hundred students. He continues his scholarly and practical interest in teaching engineering mechanics.
Dr Nadine Marcus
Dr Nadine Marcus is a Senior Lecturer in Human Computer Interaction, School of Computer Science and Engineering, UNSW. Inspired by Cognitive Load Theory, her research focuses on the design of multimedia educational technology to improve learning and interface design, including animation and transient information effects and speech based measures of mental load. She supervised the PhD project that involved the creation of the Adaptive eLearning Platform (AeLP). She has contributed to interface design as well as evaluation of adaptive tutorials to ensure they lead to better learning outcomes.
Dr Carol Russell
Dr Carol Russell is a Senior Lecturer in the Teaching Development Unit at the University of Western Sydney. She has experience in engineering, in technical publishing and with the UK Open University in distance education. Since 2000 she has worked in campus universities in Australia, including UNSW, specializing in use of educational technology. She has degrees in Applied Physics and Management, and her PhD is in e-learning adoption in campus universities.
Professor Roger Hadgraft
Roger Hadgraft is an ALTC Discipline Scholar in Engineering and ICT. He has led curriculum change in several engineering disciplines, with a focus on problem/project-based learning (PBL) at Monash, RMIT and Melbourne Universities. At RMIT, he also co-established the multidisciplinary Master of Sustainable Practice. In 2012, Roger returned to RMIT to lead a new, cross-disciplinary program in Sustainable Systems Engineering. He is a Governing Board member of the International Research in Engineering Education Network.
Assoc. Professor Tom Molyneaux
As Deputy Head – Learning and Teaching in the School of Civil Environmental and Chemical Engineering at RMIT University, Tom Molyneaux is responsible for the management and conduct of the courses and teaching programs across the School. Key educational pursuits include developing methods to assess conceptual learning and he has an active interest in techniques of management and assessment of group based project work – particularly involving large class sizes. Current responsibilities include 1st year project based courses – Engineering Skills and Environmental Principles.
Dr Tim White
Before accepting an academic position in 2010, Dr White worked in local industry as a mechanical design engineer. In 2013 he founded “TRW – Forensic Mechanical Engineers Pty Ltd”, where he currently works as ‘Director’. As an academic convening design courses from first- through to fourth-year, Dr White has witnessed first-hand the evolution of students through their degree program and became involved in the network in an attempt to help ‘plug the gaps’ he identified in the abilities of today’s graduates. Synergies within the network have enabled him to develop coursework to both improve the students’ experience as well as the skills they acquire along the way.
Dr Roberto Ojeda
Dr Roberto Ojeda is the Course Coordinator for the B.Eng in Naval Architecture program at the Australian Maritime College, an institute of the University of Tasmania (UTAS). He has been actively involved in the teaching of 1st and 2nd year engineering units at AMC for which he has been awarded two UTAS teaching merit certificates. His interest in the development and application of new teaching approaches and techniques motivated him to be an active part of the Adaptive Mechanics Network aimed at developing new and engaging adaptive tools to teach key threshold concepts to first year mechanics students.
Professor Ganga Prusty
Gangadhara is a Professor in the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at UNSW and has contributed significantly to the enhancement of student learning. Using a blend of traditional and contemporary teaching methods, he has helped students understand the key threshold concepts of the mechanics courses effectively. He has received multiple teaching excellence awards, including Australian Awards for Teaching, Australian Council of Engineering Deans Award for Engineering Education Excellence, UNSW Vice Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence Award, National Citation Award by Australian Learning & Teaching Council (ALTC) for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning and the 2010 Lecturer of the Year award. He pioneered the Adaptive eLearning technologies with traditional teaching in novel ways to help net-gen students in large engineering classes. His teaching development has been taken up by students and academics at the national and international universities.
Mohammad Uddin
Dr Mohammad Uddin is currently a lecturer at the School of Engineering in the University of South Australia. Along with pursuing quality research on biomedical manufacturing, Dr Uddin teaches extensively various engineering courses, e.g. Engineering Dynamics, Mechanics of Machines, and Mechanical Engineering Practice.
“Engineering design is a daunting and challenging task and students often struggle in the process to achieve an optimum solution. Therefore, there is an urgent need of how we, academics, can encourage students to develop their design minds and practices. Since I get familiar with, adaptive tutorials are found to be a realistic online based tool for students to practice engineering design process By being involved in such a big network, I would be able to integrate those innovative adaptive tutorials into my course to improve further student’s learning outcomes more efficiently. From student’s perspective, the benefit would be students will have opportunities to access and practice a range of tutorials involving different problem based scenarios to re-strengthen and broaden their capability in engineering design problem solving tasks.”
Dr Tim White
Before accepting an academic position in 2010, Dr White worked in local industry as a mechanical design engineer. In 2013 he founded “TRW – Forensic Mechanical Engineers Pty Ltd”, where he currently works as ‘Director’. As an academic convening design courses from first- through to fourth-year, Dr White has witnessed first-hand the evolution of students through their degree program and became involved in the network in an attempt to help ‘plug the gaps’ he identified in the abilities of today’s graduates. Synergies within the network have enabled him to develop coursework to both improve the students’ experience as well as the skills they acquire along the way.
Professor Jan H. F. (Erik) Meyer
Professor Meyer, the External Evaluator of the project, is the originator of the notion of threshold concepts. He is a Professor of Education, in the School of Civil Engineering at The University of Queensland, Australia. He has two symbiotic research interests: in university teaching, and student learning wellbeing. In order to inform teaching, much of his earlier research activity concentrated on the quantitative modelling of individual differences in students’ learning. This modelling work has, in turn, been used since 2004 as the basis for further research in developing mechanisms to help students develop their meta-learning capacity (awareness of, and control over, their learning). The more recent development of the Threshold Concepts Framework integrates these modelling and meta-learning interests and extends them into new research domains as reflected in his most recent publications.
Dr Jeung-Hwan Doh
Dr Jeung-Hwan Doh is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Engineering at Griffith University. He obtained Bachelor with Honours and Masters with Honours in his civil engineering degree from University of Wollongong. He then obtained his Ph.D. from Griffith University. He is teaching both Civil and Mechanical Engineering students in the mechanics of materials course. Dr. Doh became involved in the network due to his extensive experience in the relevant engineering disciplines as well as his previous history in course delivery. He could foresee the benefits to all involved available from the incorporation of Online adaptive tutorials. Dr. Doh collaborates extensively in multidisciplinary teams of engineering staff. In addition he also teaches Industrial design students, with little or no previous mathematics experience or engineering education. The Online adaptive tutorial provides an enormous benefit given the extensive variation, capability and education background of the students undertaking these programs. It provides the platform required to deliver individual feedback and guidance based on student performance, benefiting student outcomes. In preliminary trials with students from the previous semester, outcomes and feedback from the student cohort was excellent. Students have communicated their satisfaction with this program and the benefits they achieved through the use of the Online adaptive tutorial despite it only being preliminary in nature.
Dr Roberto Ojeda
Dr Roberto Ojeda is the Course Coordinator for the B.Eng in Naval Architecture program at the Australian Maritime College, an institute of the University of Tasmania (UTAS). He has been actively involved in the teaching of 1st and 2nd year engineering units at AMC for which he has been awarded two UTAS teaching merit certificates. His interest in the development and application of new teaching approaches and techniques motivated him to be an active part of the Adaptive Mechanics Network aimed at developing new and engaging adaptive tools to teach key threshold concepts to first year mechanics students.
Professor Tim McCarthy
Tim McCarthy joined the School of Civil Mining and Environmental Engineering in December 2004 having spent nearly 20 years as Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST which merged to form the Universityof Manchester in 2004). He has worked on the design of offshore and onshore steel structures and has written abest selling text book, “AutoCAD Express” on the popular CAD program, AutoCAD. In 2010 he was recognised with an Australian Learning and Teaching Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning for leadership in curriculum and space design that fosters collaborative learning. He is also the recipient of a number of Nationally Competitive ALTC/OLT grants to research various aspects of Engineering Education. In 2013 he led the student construction team which built “The Illawarra Flame” a net zero energy eco-house that won the Solar Decathlon China 2013 worldwide competition.
Dr Garth Pearce
Dr Garth Pearce is a Lecturer with the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering. He specialises in:
His specific research interests include:
Dr Warren Smith
Dr. Warren Smith is a Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales. His research interests include, among others: Complex Systems, Mechanics Design, Vehicles Design, Naval Architecture and Authentic and Immersive Experiential Learning. He has won the UNSW Canberra Community Engagement Award for Services to the F1inSchools Program in 2013, the UNSW Canberra Rector’s Commendation for Excellence in Classroom Teaching in 2010 and ALTC and AAEE Citations for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning in 2008.
Dr Fidelis Mashiri
Dr. Fidelis Mashiri is an Associate Professor in Civil Engineering (Structural Engineering) at the University of Western Sydney. Prior to joining the University of Western Sydney in 2009, he was a lecturer at the University of Tasmania. Before then he was a research fellow at Monash University following the completion of his PhD at the same university. Fidelis has worked as a site engineer on dam projects in Zimbabwe and as a consulting engineer in Chile and Australia. He is currently a member of the Australian Standard Committees on Steel Structures, BD-001, Cold-Formed Steel Structures, BD-082 and Security Screen Doors and Window Grilles, CS-023. Fidelis is a member of The Institution of Engineers, Australia (IEAust), the Welding Technology Institute (WTIA) and the Australian Steel Institute (ASI).
Dr Nadine Marcus
Dr Nadine Marcus is a Senior Lecturer with the School of Computer Science and Engineering. Her research interests include:
Professor Lorelle Burton
Professor Lorelle Burton is a lecturer in the School of Psychology and Counselling at the University of Southern Queensland. She teaches a Foundation Psychology course as well as others for Honours, Masters and Doctoral supervision. She received the Carrick Australian Award for Teaching Excellence and the Carrick Australian Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning, both in 2006.
Dr Robin Ford
In thirty years at The School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering Robin Ford’s many innovations included the award-winning “First year Labweek” (with Dr T Barber). He was Director of Teaching in the School, and for the Faculty coordinated the development and first implementations of its common 1st year Design course for over nine hundred students. He continues his scholarly and practical interest in teaching engineering mechanics.
Matthew James
Matthew James is an Educational Developer working for the University of New South Wales. In 2013 he graduated from UNSW with a Mechanical Engineering degree with an undergraduate thesis titled “Creation of online tutorial videos for MMAN1300”. He first started tutoring Mathematics to high school students in 2008 but later tutored Mechanical Engineering students in 2013 and 2014. Matthew is a passionate advocate for blended learning and continues to upload free educational content to YouTube teaching anonymous students Statics & Dynamics and Engineering Vibrations.
Sasha Vassar
Sasha Vassar has a Masters in Computer Engineering, and has spend eight years in the industry. Her passion for education and teaching has brought her back to the university to undertake a PhD in the field of Education. She is currently working on her PhD and is also the Project Officer for the OLT grant in the field of Adaptive Tutorials, which is helping her combine her love for education and engineering all at once.