Dr. Joseph Stokes Teaching Profile:

Dr. Stokes joined the academic staff of the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering in 2000, halfway through his PhD studies here in DCU, which he completed in 2003. Since 2000 he has been developing both his teaching and research career, and he has made strides in incorporating his research expertise (especially the emerging area of Bioengineering) into his teaching material. Dr. Stokes lectures six modules from first year Undergraduate to MSc level. Dr. Stokes was appointed as Chairperson of the Access/GD/MSc in Computer Aided Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering programme on October 1st 2005. Since his appointment as chairperson he has been actively trying to enhance the marketability of the programme, by introducing more choices within the modules to allow students follow specific streams (Mechanical or Manufacturing Streams) within the degree. This focuses the students into areas of expertise, which are more desirable by industrial employers. Another initiative was his inclusion of the MM533 Research Practice and Methodology, which will be taught in Semester 2 06/07 within the programme. This module will cover a number of learning outcomes such as; report / thesis / journal paper writing skills, statistics design of experiments, analysis of results, ethical issues, Word Long Document and Excel, citation and referencing, literature search, how to critically analyse publications and impact factors. This module will not only aid the student during their MSc project but also when they conduct experimentation or research during their future career.

The Proposal: Under the supervision of Dr. Joseph Stokes a student will be undertaken between October 1st 2006 and the 30th September 2008 to develop a web-based guided study teaching/experiment initiative to encourage problem based learning for part-time students within the GD/MSc in CAMME Programme. This initiative proposes to integrate the traditional activities together with web-based and video (mp3) activities to bring the lecture hall/laboratory into the part-time students home, so they are provided with an equal opportunity of gaining the same knowledge of that received by full-time CAMME students. It is anticipated that the part time students will adopt a deeper learning strategy compared to our current teaching approach, so that their continuous assessment/examination skills will improve.