Engineering Pathway, NEEDS, John Wiley & Sons, Microsoft Research, Techsmith and Autodesk are pleased to announce the 2011 Premier Award for Excellence in Engineering Education Courseware, for which we are seeking submissions of exemplary courseware. The Premier Award is an annual international awards competition that recognizes high-quality, engaging, non-commercial courseware – technology-based materials  and learning innovations – developed to support  and enhance engineering education environments. Beyond just recognizing outstanding courseware, the Premier Award evaluates and acknowledges exceptional learning experiences. We believe that our thorough peer review process, equal in rigor to a research journal review, has been successful in highlighting and rewarding the efforts of faculty members working on improving engineering education. Since 1997, thirty-three outstanding courseware packages and learning experiences have been rewarded. If you or someone you know has developed non-commercial courseware or exceptional web sites designed to enhance engineering education, please consider submitting for the Premier Award.

Please visit the Engineering Pathway Premier Award pages or download the Premier Award Call for Submissions flyer for more information regarding submissions, prizes, past winners and sponsors. The winner(s) will be announced and prizes awarded at the 2011 Frontiers in Education Conference on October 12-15, 2011 in Rapid City, SD. For more information, please contact: Joe Tront, (540) 231-5067, or Brandon Muramatsu.

Submission Deadline: July 15, 2011 -  5 PM ET

Last year, the Premier Award for Excellence in Engineering Education Courseware was awarded for two entries: Greenfoot Integrated Development Environment (Greenfoot), submitted by Poul Henriksen, Michael Kölling, Davin McCall and Marion Zalk, and Dynamics Animations, submitted by Richard Stanley.

The award was presented at the 2010 Frontiers in Education Conference held  in Washington, D.C. The award-winning courseware was distributed on CD ROM at the FIE Conference and is also available online. The panel of judges comprised a diverse cross-section of experts in engineering education and interactive media. Sponsors of the award program were John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Microsoft Research, TechSmith and MathWorks.

Greenfoot is a pedagogical tool for teaching computer programming that allows students to use the full Java programming language to create games and simulations. The Greenfoot system greatly enhances student motivation while reinforcing object-oriented programming concepts. Greenfoot is a resource that can be used by instructors to support their teaching of programming concepts through the use of animation and process scenarios. Students instantiate objects into an onscreen world and then create Java code that causes the object, generally a character related to the scenario, to perform certain actions and responses to other objects encountered in the surroundings. The Greenfoot Integrated Development Environment provides facilities for sharing programming resources and usage advice as well as to post finished programming projects that are of general and entertainment interest to student users.

The Dynamics Animations are interactive animation software for an introductory dynamics course. The web-based animation is directly linked to a dynamics assignment, and no programming is required of the user. The software is designed to guide students to expose and explore dynamics concepts—and misconceptions. The software provides considerable choice to the user regarding the depth of exploration. Novice students may vary only the required parameter to answer the question that is being asked. For more experienced students, faculty can ask more complicated questions involving the same scenarios; these advanced scenarios typically require changing additional parameters.

The Engineering Pathway is a portal to high-quality teaching and learning resources in applied science and math, engineering, computer science/information technology and engineering technology, for use by K-12 and university educators and students. Engineering Pathway is the engineering education “wing” of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL).