Incorporating the Use of a Materials Database into a Materials Science and Engineering Freshman Course

Over the past years, our team has taken a concerted effort to integrate computational modules into courses across the undergraduate curriculum, in order to equip students with computational skills in a variety of contexts that span the field of Materials Science and Engineering. This effort has proven sustainable during the recent period of online transition of many courses, illustrating one of the benefits of computational modules. The most recent addition to our set of modules included a visualization component that was incorporated into our introductory freshman course for the first time in Fall 2019. Students can perform this module either using local computer labs, access those resources remotely, or via their own computers. In the Fall of 2020, we modified this module and expanded it towards the utilization of a materials database to teach students how to search for materials with specific properties. The results were then interfaced with the previously existing visualization module to connect the atomic structure and symmetry of materials with their properties and to compare them with experimental results. We implemented a more detailed survey to learn to what extent students gained the capability of using databases for future research and education. We will also use these responses to further develop and improve our existing modules.