Enhancing 3D Visualization for Learning Volumes of Solid, an Application in Integral Calculus

• Main Author: Rose Arienah binti Mohd Hamdan, Rose Arienah
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Teknologi Petronas 2012
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/6464/1/ICT_ROSE%20ARIENAH%20BINTI%20MOHD%20HAMDAN.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/6464/
• Institution: Universiti Teknologi Petronas

Mathematics is one of the major subjects which now integrates multimedia technology to its instructional materials and has become a phenomenon all around the world. The difficulty of visualizing mathematical concepts has been one of the major factors for students who find mathematics challenging, especially in calculating volumes of solid under the topic of integration. The objective of the project is to investigate on the suitable technique to produce a 3-dimensional (3D) visualization to demonstrate volumes of solid, and to develop a multimedia courseware prototype for it. Next, is to evaluate the usability of the prototlpe. The focus is on the methods of calculating volumes of solid under the topic of integration, which is a topic in Calculus. A multimedia courseware using Macromedia Toolbook implementing 2D graphics has been previously developed to assist the foundation students in UTP to learn integration. To enhance the student's visualization of calculating volumes of solid, a 3D graphics multimedia courseware has been developed using the ADDIE model. The tools that are used to develop the prototype are Blender for 3D modeling and SWiSH Max 4 for layout and interactivity of courseware. Questionnaire has been dishibuted to get feedback from the students pertaining to 3 categories which are visualization, navigation and content. The key findings from the analysis showed that the use of video, images, graph, audio and colour in the prototype is suitable.