Granta surveyed materials educators and found that their top goals are: keeping up-to-date with industry and technology trends, providing real-life industry case studies, and engaging students. The new Products, Materials and Processes database achieves these goals by providing a visually-inspiring, interactive teaching resource that enables students to explore interesting and innovative products and link to information on the materials and processes used to make them. Developed with extensive academic feedback, it offers two user experiences: the Designer’s View and the Engineer’s View. Students coming from both perspectives can learn what makes products functional and aesthetically-pleasing, and can gain greater understanding of the cross-disciplinary thinking required for successful product development.
Granta’s materials software tools and information resources are widely used in industry. Providing access to some of this technology alongside Granta's teaching resources also supports students in preparing for industry. The Part Cost Estimator, enhanced in CES EduPack 2017 with the addition of machining processes, was developed collaboratively with a number of industry partners. It allows engineers to explore questions such as: “Is a high performance injection-molded polymer part an economic alternative to machined metals?”
Getting students started quickly and engaging them with materials is key to retaining them. Enhanced support for introductory-level courses includes the new Learn button that sends students directly to self-study resources. Students can also get up-to-speed faster with more interactive materials property charts, new datasheets providing a visual overview of material families, and new process images that give an improved insight into real industrial processes.
Sustainable Development is an important subject area that motivates students, but its complexity can make it hard to teach. CES EduPack 2017 features new indicators that support projects to explore the risks associated with material choice, and to consider restricted substances and material reuse. An updated sustainability database and accompanying workshop packages, with templates and worked solutions, are designed to help educators introduce sustainability concepts at an earlier stage to undergraduates.
The new features build on CES EduPack’s existing comprehensive database of materials and process information, powerful materials property plotting tools, a range of supporting lectures, projects, videos, exercises, and resources in English, French, German, and Spanish. CES EduPack is updated every year in response to feedback from the global community of more than 10,000 materials educators who access the Granta teaching resources. Granta works collaboratively with academics from world-leading institutions, including through the company’s support for the Materials Education Symposia.
Professor Stephen H. Carr, Northwestern University, USA, provides one example of the use of CES EduPack: “CES EduPack is used extensively at Northwestern from undergraduate service courses to professional masters programs. It engages students and supports rigorous decisions among a large array of possible materials. CES EduPack contains a wealth of tutorials that explain things that otherwise might require students to access multiple textbooks.”
Visit www.grantadesign.com/events for details of webinars on CES EduPack 2017, including Preparing Engineering Students for Industry with Prof Mike Ashby, of Cambridge University and Granta, on February 9.
