(366a) Chemical Engineering Mobile Apps

Although we have seen a nearly complete shift among chemical engineering students from desktop to laptop computers, it has merely created an incremental change in their education. However, the benefits of mobile devices in engineering education still remain largely untapped. There is a great need and opportunity to put chemical engineering data and problem-solving tools in students’ (and faculty members’) pockets. This presentation will discuss 5+ years of effort and motivation behind the development of several chemical engineering-oriented mobile apps, including Chemical Engineering AppSuite. Through the use of embedded analytics, measuring user demographics and interaction with the apps reveals interesting details about what kinds of calculations and what types of data chemical engineers are most interested in and use most frequently. While using to these mobile apps has a number of benefits for expediting calculations and facilitating access to data, the associated analytics can help shape teaching chemical engineering in the 21^st Century.