Abstract
Teachers’ clarity is the most essential factor in student learning. In addition to the teaching approach, teaching material is necessary for clearly presenting complicated engineering topics. Smart classrooms with multimedia support are conducive to covering complex engineering topics in less time. Nevertheless, the graphics are generally in static image format (from textbook publishers as instructor resources). Therefore, the entire image is displayed with a single click. Despite being time effective, this approach is not helpful from a student’s learning point of view because the essence of developing the concept from scratch is lost. PowerPoint provides various graphic and visual tools to develop detailed graphical illustrations using simple drawing objects and animation tools. Converting an image into a combination of drawing objects has the advantage of creating the illustration from scratch using animation tools stepwise rather than displaying the entire image at once. The other benefits include using multi-colors for improved visuals and a better understanding of a complicated graphical illustration or concept. Nonetheless, two-dimensional illustrations cannot represent three-dimensional configurations and motion simulations. This issue can be addressed by interactive three-dimensional illustrations and carefully planned motion animations. The illustrations are, however, not readily available and must be developed by the instructor. Development of interactive illustrations and animations requires considerable time and effort, in addition to knowledge of the software to be used to create such material. This work presents interactive illustrations for an enhanced learning experience for mechanical engineering courses at Texas A&M University Texarkana.