INTERNET BROADCAST DEEMED A SUCCESS
Nearly 30 engineers from across the country recently shared their opinions on a student design project, most of them from workplaces that are hundreds—even thousands—of miles from the Ames campus. They offered their advice to Iowa State’s AirISU team during an Internet broadcast from the Alliant Energy–Lee Liu Auditorium in Howe Hall on October 6. This was the group’s third design review, but the first one available online.
AirISU held a live, online broadcast of its design review on October 6.
AirISU plans to build and eventually fly a lightweight, two-seat sport plane with a single engine. That will be a first, says Project Director John Anastos, a senior in aerospace engineering. “Some schools have used kits to build a plane, while others have designed planes but never built one,” he explains. “We’re the first to do both.”
Engineering distance education (EDE) coordinated the broadcast, and, except for a minor hardware malfunction early in the event the Web cast went well, says Paul Jewell, program coordinator for EDE. “Overall I’d call it a success,” Jewell says.
Design reviews like this help the students get feedback about their plane, but as Anastos observes, it’s not easy getting 20 to 30 engineers from Boeing to fly to campus for a two-hour presentation. With the online broadcast, however, engineers from Boeing—and other companies interested in the project—could watch and then ask questions or provide suggestions. “We want to make the best design possible,” Anastos notes, “so the more sources we have telling us what they think, obviously the better off we’re going to be.”
Nathan See, associate project director and senior in aerospace engineering, waits for the online audience to post questions and suggestions.
Nathan See, a senior in aerospace engineering and associate project director, says Boeing reserved a conference room for the broadcast, and more than a dozen engineers from the company watched the demonstration live.
“They even brought in fajitas for lunch while they were watching,” Anastos adds.
The broadcast has been archived and will be available on AirISU’s Web site www.airisu.org. Project leaders hope many people will take time to view the program over the next week or two, and share their thoughts.
Around 40 students and engineering faculty were on hand for the design review in Howe Hall.
AirISU will schedule a fourth and final design review—also to be shown live online—sometime in late November or early December. “We’ve come a long way since our first couple of design reviews to now broadcasting live over the Internet,” see Says. “We’ll definitely do this again.”
