Interactive Web Apps for Visualizations in Engineering Education

The diversification of media in teaching has a large impact on the quality and the outcome of university courses. In particular, we focus on the positive effects of interactive visualization during the learning process. Depicting numbers in a graphical form has always been a crucial way to understand and explain the underlying physical phenomena. Making the graphics interactive brings the understanding to a higher level. Moreover, interactive visualizations of data, numbers, equations etc. help to motivate students and strengthen the sharing of knowledge. We have developed interactive web applications for the visualization of certain phenomena in technical mechanics. The open-source Python-based library Bokeh is used as programming framework. It has a concise approach to the construction of novel graphics with high-performance interactivity over very large or streaming datasets. The source code of the applications is freely available on the platform Github. The source code is executed on a webserver of our University which is linked to the webpage of our chair (http://www.bm.bgu.tum.de/lehre/interactive-apps/). Users can access the applications using any computer or mobile device without the need of installing any software or browser plugins (like e.g. Adobe Flash). They can directly start exploring contents, e.g. they can let a spring-mass-damper system enter resonance by changing the excitation frequency. We are convinced, that the interactive process enhances understanding, even if the user does not interact with a strategy but just uses his intuition. These applications can be also used to explain complex concepts to the general public.      «

The diversification of media in teaching has a large impact on the quality and the outcome of university courses. In particular, we focus on the positive effects of interactive visualization during the learning process. Depicting numbers in a graphical form has always been a crucial way to understand and explain the underlying physical phenomena. Making the graphics interactive brings the understanding to a higher level. Moreover, interactive visualizations of data, numbers, equations etc. help...     »