Transforming+materials

=**Transforming your materials into the FLX template**=

Roy Williams 07 August 2007

This is an outline of the basic steps that you need to follow to transform your word, or power-point, or WebCT materials into the Flexible Learning Template.
 * 1. Introduction**

The purpose of the FLX Template is to provide a single ‘web’ page, which contains all the information students need to do the course, as well as all the links to related information and resources that they might need to refer to or consult while they are learning. Students should be able to navigate through the materials with little or no ‘instruction’ (although the ‘guidelines’ section always includes a guide to using the template, just in case).

The simplest way to do this is to provide the following to the Studio, in the form of Word pages, in Word files.

2. Sections Decide what sections and sub-sections you need for your material.


 * 1) ? how many sections
 * 2) ? how many Topics (or lessons) in each section
 * 3) ? do I want subsection in any of the topics (see Mike Wait’s material on Combustion)

Once you have decided on the sections, topics and sub-topics, you need to write an Introduction to the Unit as a whole (See the Introduction page).

This is the main part of the learning materials, and it is that part where the student is able to work through the course according to their own prior knowledge and experience – in other words, to create their own learning pathways. It will appear in the middle of the screen.
 * 3. Contents and activities**

Once you have decided what sections, topics and sub-topics you want, you need to create a Word page for each ‘learning byte’ or lessons (see the Learning Bytes page).

All the information that students need about the course, the timetable, the lecturers, exams, assignments, can get put into this section (see the Guidelines page)
 * 4. Guildelines**

This is where the students will find all the information that they need for this course
 * 5. Resources**

It can contain …

· Pdf files of contents, presentations, notes, etc for them to print out. The University Library has permission to print out and copy Journal articles for students, so you might like to use this facility. · Information about readings from other sources: websites, text books, articles, etc.


 * Introduction**

This unit is …… And will include …

You will be able to, on the basic of your experience …….


 * Learning Byte**

This is an outline of what you need to put into each lesson, or ‘learning byte’ or ‘topic’ / ‘sub-topic’. It should be no more than one screen plus a maximum of one screen’s scroll down. If you have more information you want to include in this learning byte, describe the information here, and provide links to the detail on another page, or even a linked PDF if it is a long document.

The students should be able to see what the lesson is about, what they need to be able to DO with it, and what resources and information is relevant to the task. Different students need to be able to navigate through all this information according to their own needs, and at their own pace.


 * Title ……**

e.g. “This topic [lesson] is about …. And the important thing to remember is … “ (50-100 words)
 * Introduction**

e.g. ..“The abc process is explained in this __section”__ [link to slides a,b,c or page 4…..]
 * Resources**

This section contains is a description of resources students might need to look at, with links to fuller versions of those resources, or just links to the resources if you think that will be sufficient.


 * Activity [or tutorial, or task]**

e.g. “If x is … and y is …. How would you calculate ….

Or

“This exercise is to calculate. and ..” [link to tutorial/ quiz/ assignment material ….]


 * Note**: you might like to add a link to discussion forums here, either to discuss how to go about the task (or activity), or to post the results of the task for discussion by the group or by the whole class

This section (which appears in the Index column on the left of the screen) contains information and links about the course, the outcomes, etc.
 * Guidelines**

e.g. Course Information [link 1] Instructor information [link 2] Etc…


 * [link 1, to… ]**


 * Course Outline**

1. Failure Modes - Review of failure modes and fracture mechanisms in metallic, non-metallic and composite materials.

2. Fracture Mechanics - Principles of linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM); strain energy release rate, stress intensity factors. Fracture toughness and defect tolerance for different material types and composites. Application of LEFM in fatigue and stress-corrosion crack growth testing.

3. Quality Assessment and Defect Sizing - Quality assessment of components and joints in the different types of materials by destructive and non-destructive testing; evaluation of defect size and shape; minimum detectable flaw criterion.

4. Safe-Life Prediction Methods - Life prediction for high cycle fatigue; influence of material properties, design, manufacture, type of loading and environment; concept of life-fraction damage accumulation. Crack formation life prediction; use of low cycle fatigue data and notch analysis methods. Creep rate and life-to-rupture methods. Fracture mechanics approach to life prediction; use of fracture toughness, and of fatigue and stress corrosion crack growth data, limitations of LEFM.


 * [link 2, to… ]**

Resources This section (which appears in the Index column on the left of the screen) contains information and links about all the resources that the student may wish to consult to do the unit.

Lessons 1 [link to pdf L1] Lesson 2 etc….
 * PDFs**

…. (text books?)
 * Readings**
 * …** (may include links to PDFs of articles copied by the Library – see first page)
 * …** (may include links to PDFs of articles copied by the Library – see first page)