Interactive Online Figures for the Core Concepts in Structural Steel Design

This paper presents online interactive resources, or applets, covering the core concepts in an undergraduate structural steel design course. They were developed for AISC's Educator Resources website using GeoGebra, an online and open source platform. The applets are intended to promote learning in steel design by cultivating a rich visual connection between AISC specification equations and the related engineering concepts. Many parameters involved in the simulated scenarios can be controlled by the user, allowing them to manipulate the items and visually gain familiarity with the relationship each parameter has with the mechanism being demonstrated. This is intended to combat the "plug-and-chug" mentality to which students often succumb in design courses. These interactive depictions of structural members, relevant plots, and animations provide students a unique online study aid. Further, instructors can use these tools during lectures or as customizable homework assignments. Currently, the available applets cover basic concepts in steel framing, flow of forces, steel material behavior, and limit states and design of tension members and simple connections. Applets are currently under construction that cover compression members, bending members, and members subjected to combined loading. This paper provides a brief description of each applet and suggestions about how best to utilize them in a steel design course. Finally, some preliminary student opinion data is presented showing their effectiveness in teaching. (Author note, this paper is proposed for the "Best in 5" category, as the tools have only just been developed and not much data on effectiveness has been collected yet. )