The effective use of professional software in an undergraduate mining engineering curriculum

The use of professional software is an integral part of a student's education in the mining engineering curriculum at The Pennsylvania State University. Even though mining engineering represents a limited market across U.S. educational institutions, the goal still exists for using this type of software to enrich the learning environment with visual elements and, therefore, enhance the students' ability to understand design principles in a more systematic manner. All of the students are required to develop a complete mine-design project, from conception to completion, which includes the selection of appropriate mining components and systems to meet desired needs. However, the question that is often asked is whether or not the desired benefits from using such software can be justified in terms of initial cost, and programming time required for both the instructor and students of small engineering programs, such as mining engineering. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the experiences of faculty and students with typical professional software tools available for mining-engineering educational programs, and to assess their ability to enhance active teaching and learning through computer-based problem solving in a manner which is cost effective for a small-enrolment engineering major.