Mastering Engineering Vector Drawing Tool Video Transcript

This is a transcript of the video on the Educator Features page and Student Features page.

Hi. I’m here to talk to you about an exciting feature in Mastering Engineering. Created specifically for Engineering students and instructors, this online homework and assessment tool is designed to support students’ mastery and application of the skills they’ll need for a successful career in Engineering.

In Mastering Engineering, tutorial problems provide next-level support for student learning. In this video, I'll show you how it coaches students on Free-Body-Diagrams.

Mastering Engineering lets students practice in an interactive environment using graphical answer types. These questions allow students to visualize answers just like they were working it out by hand. Mastering doesn’t replace pencil-and paper. It enhances how students solve problems during homework.

Drawing Free Body Diagrams is an important step in solving mechanics problems and a necessary skill for students to develop. These diagrams are a simple abstraction of the forces acting on an object, but they often present a conceptual challenge for students.

Let's work on this free body diagram

First, we click on "add element", select "Tension CB", and draw the vector from point C towards B. We repeat for "Tension CA", and draw the vector from points C to A.

Now let's see what happens if we enter a wrong answer.

We'll click "add element" as before, select "Weight" from the dropdown. We'll draw the vector and click "submit".

Check it out. Mastering Engineering not only gives students an interactive environment for drawing vectors, but it also gives them wrong answer feedback. This gives an explanation as to why an answer is wrong, without giving away the answer. As a result, students can explore their process, visualize the problem, and then come to an "aha" moment, just like they would when going over a homework problem during office hours.

Now let's say the student needs a hint. Mastering Engineering provides 2 types of hints that help students work through, and ultimately solve, problems.

Declarative hints provide advice on how to approach the problem while Socratic hints break a problem down into smaller sub-problems.

So let’s now solve this Part:

We'll begin by deleting the incorrect weight vector. Now we'll choose "Tension CW" from the dropdown menu and draw the vector from C to W. Press submit.

And there you have it! That was a quick look at a Free-Body-Diagram tutorial in Mastering Engineering. You can learn more at MasteringEngineering.com. And if you want to find out about all of Pearson's MyLab & Mastering products, be sure to check out Pearsonmylabandmastering.com. Thanks for watching.