Roy T. R. McGrann

Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) is a course that is required during the third year in the mechanical engineering curriculum at Binghamton University. The primary objective of the course is to educate students in the procedures of computer-aided engineering design. The solid modeling and analysis program Pro/Engineer™ (PTC®) is used as the basis of this course. As a means to this objective, students must be trained to use the Pro/Engineer™ software. We created a series of video lectures using Camtasia Studio (TechSmith®) to accomplish the Pro/Engineer™ training. As the literature for the software says: “Camtasia Studio is a complete solution for quickly creating professional-looking videos of your PC desktop activity.” Thirteen videos were created for this course, which incorporated audio combined with PowerPoint™ slides. The video files (avi's) are distributed to students on five CD's. This article describes the structure of the course and how the videos are integrated into it. Also included is a brief overview of the creation of the videos. Results of a survey of student satisfaction with the video format that was used in the course are presented.