About

Engineer-it an Online Information Resource (OIR) for those who seek to learn to operate in situations of complex uncertainty.

It is based on the MediaWiki software platform that is used by Wikipedia. It is intended that 'chapters' of Eit will be managed by different groups.

A major advantage of an OIR is that it allows information to be readily updated and extended. When publishing a book, decisions about length and scope need to be made. For an OIR such constraints are much reduced. The information in the resource can be subject to continuous amendment and extension where that is appropriate.

Timeline

July/August 2020

Sponsored by the Institution Engineers in Scotland (IES) and the Scottish Branch of the Institution of Structural Engineers, undergraduate civil engineering students at Glasgow University, Amy Lillico and Ann-Cathirn Reismann worked with Iain MacLeod of IES on the development of a prototype information resource for structural mechanics. The outcome was Stempedia. The prototype was establishsed to test methods for presenting information for learners in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects and focuses on issues for early learners in structural mechanics. The project demonstrated the efficacy of hyperlinked documents for learning in technical contexts A particular focus was on Applications Sheets that explain how the mechanics is used in decision-making in structural design. Such information is not readily available, but is important for motivating learners, leading to improved understanding

The software platform for Stempedia is a Wordpress template that was adequate for testing of ideas but was not suitable for a well structured information resource.

November 2020

Liam Guermache, an undergraduate student in Civil Engineering at Glasgow University tested the suitability of MediaWiki as the software platform. (MediaWiki is the free software platform used by Wikipedia). He set up a limited version of Stempedia usng MediaWiki.

January 2021

A decision was made to adopt MediaWiki as the software platform and change the name of the resource to Engineer-it.

February 2021

The resource was transferred to eit.engineers.scot and the name Engineer-it was adopted. It was decided to have the resource organised into modules, each chapter being the responibility of a group.

Initial modules

Strategies for engineered outcomes provides information on topics such as Critical thinking, Leadership, Communication, etc.

Structural_engineeering The stempedia files were converted to mediawiki format and informatio abot structural design was developed in July August 2021