Animating Soil Models
The aim of the Animating Soil Models project is to create visualisations of so-called material models for teaching purposes. Material models are mechanical theories that mathematically describe the behaviour of materials.
In this project, this involves the ground. The project content supports the presentation of abstract content through visualisation: around fifty animations and interactive graphics are permanently available as an open educational resource on the platform. soilmodels.com/soilanim/ permanently freely accessible on the platform. The digital project thus promotes learning that is flexible in terms of time and place and brings lasting improvements to teaching. Through dialogue with students and lecturers at many other universities, the project has been adapted and further developed several times. Many students and teaching staff have reported back that they have gained further training through the project. International collaborations have been established within the project, which have made it possible to continue the project.
Motivation:Gertraud Medicus has been using visualisations of abstract mechanical and mathematical content for teaching purposes for several years. The feedback from colleagues at other universities asking if they could use their animations was the impetus for the project idea: to create further visualisations and make them freely accessible to others as an open educational resource.
Initial situation: For many students, material modelling in engineering education is a very abstract, mathematical and difficult-to-understand subject area. In-depth knowledge of soil mechanics and material modelling is required to apply material models in practice in a meaningful way. By applying material models correctly, geotechnical simulations can be carried out realistically.
Student-centred: The exchange with students outside the University of Innsbruck and the dissemination of the project took place mainly on the social media channels LinkedIn and Twitter and via a newsletter. The project thus incorporates modern and interactive communication media and adapts communication to digitalisation and technological change. Thanks to Gertraud Medicus' intensive dialogue with students, content was adapted accordingly and continuously expanded as required: Originally, several two-dimensional animations were planned. Based on feedback from students, the focus of the project was placed on three-dimensional graphics.
Example: Various surfaces of the so-called SANISAND elastoplasticity are shown here. The interactive graphic was created in collaboration with Mahdi Taiebat (University of British Columbia, Canada) using the free software package GeoGebra.
Gertraud Medicus would like to thank the University of Innsbruck and the AURORA network for making this ProLehre project possible.