New CES EduPack 2014 teaching resources support materials, design, project work, and sustainable development

March 19, 2014

Cambridge, UK – March 19, 2014. Granta Design is launching CES EduPack 2014, a new version of its interdisciplinary materials teaching resources. CES EduPack 2014 is being used for the first time at today’s CES EduPack Short Course, which takes place at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the run-up to the 5th North American Materials Education Symposium. The new 2014 release has particular focuses on materials, design, project work, and sustainable development. CES EduPack provides comprehensive materials and process information, powerful materials software tools, and a range of supporting textbooks, lectures, projects, and exercises. It is designed to suit varying needs in all years of undergraduate study and in postgraduate teaching.

The new release is part of Granta’s on-going focus on supporting educators to improve the teaching of materials, making the subject accessible, relevant, and well-integrated with other aspects of engineering and design education. New features and enhancements, based on user feedback, include:

• For materials-related teaching: more support for introductory courses (e.g., new software homepages help users to find the information that they need more easily); extending coverage in different subject areas (e.g., bioengineering) as part of enabling campus-wide use; more features for core science teaching (e.g., an interactive Periodic Table).
• For design and project work: enhanced tools for Capstone-related project work and easier selection and filtering of materials by application, helping students to explore why particular materials are suited for particular products.
• For sustainable development, a new Sustainable Development Edition, helping students to think about the full set of social, economic, environmental, and engineering factors when considering the use of materials and processes.

CES EduPack is supported by Granta’s comprehensive  Teaching Resource Website. This provides educators at the 1,000 universities and colleges using CES EduPack with hundreds of exercises, teaching aids, and background papers developed at Granta or contributed by university and college teachers. Some of these resources are available as ‘open access resources’. The resources are valuable to anyone constructing a materials-related course, particularly those charged with integrating materials modules in areas covering engineering, design, and sustainable development.

Granta’s Education Director, Marc Fry, commented, “CES EduPack 2014 delivers the latest set of improvements based on our continuing dialogue with the Materials Education Community. Events such as this week’s Short Course and North American Materials Education Symposium are particularly important in enabling us to share ideas and understand global education needs.”

This week’s Short Course is being led by Professor Mike Ashby (University of Cambridge) and Dr. Claes Fredriksson (Granta Design), and with support from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It precedes the North American Materials Education Symposium—one of a series of three Symposia which Granta coordinates along with an independent advisory committee, and with support from organizations including ASM International, the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI), and the Federation of European Materials Societies (FEMS). The next event is in April at Cambridge University (UK).