Using emerging information technologies in aerospace research

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Title: Using emerging information technologies in aerospace research
Author(s): Bhatt, Jay; Woodson, Shawn; Yousuff, Ajmal
Keywords: Aerospace Research; Aircraft Design and Performance; Information Technology; Information Literacy; Collaboration
Date: 2012-11-29
Abstract: Emerging information technologies now provide a vast number of research and current updates in aerospace research areas that scientists and engineers would need to continually monitor to enhance their own research productivity. As these new tools become available, researchers need to become familiar with their content and new features soon enough to take advantage of their information collecting capabilities. Electronic information retrieval through resources such as Engineering Village, IEEE digital Library and aerospace databases among several others provide efficient venues to discover new state of the art content published in space related subject areas. Features such as alerting services and RSS feeds based on keyword searches assist researchers quickly to receive new information on global research developments providing researchers ability to apply new knowledge in their own respective research areas. Although such technologies provide efficient mechanisms to share, collaborate, and work together in the quest to solve a particular problem in aerospace research, the researchers are often overwhelmed with the wealth of available information, or worse, not able to take a full advantage of the available resources. This paper will describe major resources and show how researchers can effectively leverage them in their work. As a case study example, information technology utilization is demonstrated focusing on space debris management and space traffic management. These are two areas in which global collaboration among universities and organizations worldwide can help discover solutions over a period of time. As countries worldwide explore innovative systems for space exploration, it becomes all the more important for global collaboration to find solutions to problems created by space debris. Other areas such as space medicine, space policies, and innovative space exploration also can also greatly benefit by keeping current with information in order to apply that knowledge in future research methods. While researching and keeping up-to-date information in aerospace research is crucial, it is also important for experimenting with innovative teaching methods in face to face or online instructional programs worldwide. With the vision of students taking classes anywhere anytime and learning state of the art aerospace related information, innovative online teaching methods are bound to positively influence student active learning experiences. This paper also highlights some of these innovative teaching methods demonstrating how engaged, interactive, and collaborative learning in students can be accomplished.
Citation: Paper presented at International Space Conference, November 29th-30th, 2012, Ahmedabad, India
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/1860/4027
In Collections: Drexel Research