Engineering education in the age of Web 2.0-explorations through iMechanica.ORG

Web 2.0 refers to a collection of second generation web services, such as blogs, social bookmarking, wikis, podcasts, and Really Simple Syndicates (RSS) feeds. While the first generation web (Web 1.0) is about linking information available online, Web 2.0 emphasizes online collaboration and sharing among people. These new web services bring up new opportunities to innovate how we conduct research and education. We report the preliminary explorations of engineering education exploiting Web 2.0 services, through iMechanica (http://imechanica.org). Hosted at Harvard University and powered by Drupal, an open-source content management system (CMS), iMechanica provides a platform for researchers, educators and students to experiment with innovative ideas on engineering education. For example, instructors can post syllabi, lecture notes, as well as slides and videos on iMechanica. Interested learners can view and study these posts, raise questions and make comments. Quite often an active discussion produces more useful information beyond an original post, and inspires new posts and further discussions. Furthermore, one can subscribe to these discussions through RSS feeds and is notified whenever a new entry is added to the thread of discussion. The instructing and learning through iMechanica are not limited within a specific institution or a specific curriculum. Anyone in the world can join such education processes, as either an instructor or a student, or both. These preliminary explorations of engineering education in the age of Web 2.0 hold the promise to build an online life-long learning environment without boundary.