Online Course and Regional Laboratory Development in Composite Maintenance Education, Including Training Repair Manual

摘要

The major objective of this study was to develop and assess the feasibility of teaching an online class, combined with a regional laboratory, that is consistent with industry training standards published as part of a Cooperative Agreement in a Federal Aviation Administration report and Commercial Aircraft composite Repair Committee SAE Aerospace Information Report document. These standards consist of terminal course objectives and teaching points. This development represented an application of online teaching methodologies, commonly used in the social sciences such as business management and mathematics, into engineering technology. Engineering courses have not typically used the latest teaching technologies, and this approach will provide specific advantages not commonly achieved in traditional classroom frameworks. In addition, a training repair manual was developed as an important training tool for the laboratory portion of the class to expose students to the importance and use of authoritative documentation in the conduct of composite materials maintenance. Advantages of the online course approach were demonstrated as follows: (1) Greatly reduced education costs due to limited travel expenses; (2) Ability for the student to fit classroom activities within busy schedules due to the asynchronous nature of online learning; (3) Independence of global time zone effects; (4) Ability to involve experts in the composites' field to participate to a wide student audience, providing access to considerable knowledge and experience which is not as accessible in the traditional classroom; and (5) Broader student participation, mandated by the online methodology. Three major sections of the course were addressed, annotated by the number of students completing each in the prototype class: (1) a prerequisite course to bring students to a common level of understanding before taking the awareness course, (2) the awareness course, which represents the industry standard developed in earlier phases of this Cooperative Agreement, and (3) a hands-on laboratory.