UT Martin faculty and students develop system to aid in learning

Posted: Thursday, April 11, 2013 8:40 am

The Messenger 04.10.13

The faculty and students of the University of Tennessee at Martin Department of Engineering have developed the Educational Mobile Authoring and Sharing System (eMASS) to address the shortcomings of available systems promoting classroom-learning experiences.
With eMASS, educators with no programming experience can develop educational applications and share them immediately with their students and with other educators as templates for reuse. All content is created without using a laptop, and educators and students can use the application offline.
An Internet connection is only needed for downloading and sharing content through the secure servers.
“With upcoming tablets priced much cheaper than any personal computer, eMASS can offer a cheaper and far more widespread alternative to technology-aided learning,” said Dr. Somsak Sukittanon, associate professor of engineering. “On a mobile platform that fosters all communication, students and teachers can be continents apart. An American student could learn Japanese from a real Japanese teacher with neither of them leaving their home countries. While educational tablet proliferation is noteworthy in the U.S., it is staggering in countries around the world.”
Sukittanon has been involved with mobile computing since 2009 and integrates the use of modern technology into his class projects. UT Martin electrical engineering students have an opportunity to solve real-world problems in their coursework and class projects, he said.
Engineering students — including Ben Wright of Union City — have completed more than 10 projects under Dr. Sukittanon’s guidance.
“My project-oriented involvement with the engineering department has offered the experience that I expect to gain from a real-working job environment,” Wright said. “During my summer internship last year, I was involved with iPad software development for applications in pharmaceutical plants.”
Wright also participated this year in undergraduate research funded by the College of Engineering and Natural Sciences, producing two published papers that will be presented in April. He also has been offered an internship with NASA this coming summer.
“My ultimate goal is to pursue computational neuroscience in graduate school. My undergraduate studies at UTM have raised questions I want to answer in years to come,” Wright said.

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