Granta Design has announced the release of CES EduPack 2011, the latest version of the world-leading teaching resource for materials and processes, now used at over 800 universities and colleges worldwide. This year's release is supported by an expanded and enhanced Teaching Resources Website, and offers innovative new software and extended information resources to support all years of undergraduate study and postgraduate teaching and research in science, engineering, and design.
Sustainability and lightweight design are key focus areas for 2011, but new features also support applications from general mechanical engineering and materials science, through to more specialist courses such as automotive or chemical engineering.
CES EduPack combines comprehensive materials information, specialist software to access and use that information, and extensive supplementary teaching resources. It is used for lectures, project work, student exercises, and course handouts. Year-on-year development is driven by: input from the CES EduPack community of over 5,000 materials educators; feedback gathered at the annual Materials Education Symposia and other educational conferences; and Granta's own innovation program, guided by Professor Mike Ashby of Cambridge University.
Enhancements in 2011 include:
- A new, extended Teaching Resources Website containing over 200 resources including: Powerpoint lectures in four languages; exercises with worked solutions; interactive case studies; Teach Yourself booklets; white papers; Getting Started guides; materials and process selection charts; and databases such as a novel "New Emerging and Unusual Materials" database.
- Updates, based on user feedback, to the Eco Audit Tool. Now widely used to teach eco design, the tool allows students to grasp the environmental impact of products and explore different design scenarios. A new enhanced version now supports advanced teaching and research via more in-depth analysis of processing impacts.
- A new Hybrid Synthesizer that helps students to predict the properties of hybrid and composite materials and structures, and thus explore their applications, for example, in lightweight design.
- A new Low Carbon Power Edition that provides additional information resources enabling students to study the options and materials for low carbon power generation.
- New and updated data, for example on the steels used in chemical engineering and automotive applications.
"At Granta, we are committed to working very closely with the materials education community in order to identify developments that will support practical teaching and research", said Granta co-founder Professor Mike Ashby. "We aim to deliver a new version of CES EduPack on schedule every year that helps to meet these needs. We are delighted that we have once again hit this milestone, and look forward to further discussions with the community at the upcoming Materials Education Symposia."
The Materials Education Symposia are international events at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Worcester, MA - March 24th-25th) and Cambridge University, UK (April 7th-8th). They will again bring together materials educators from over twenty countries for a program coordinated by Granta Design and supported by ASM International, the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Materials Division, the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI), and The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS). Speakers will describe their approaches to materials teaching and their use of innovative teaching resources. CES EduPack 2011 will be on display and will be used in optional Short Courses on the two days preceding the symposia (see Granta's website for details: www.grantadesign.com/symposium).