Enhancing 3D Visualization for Learning Volumes of Solid, an Application in Integral Calculus

Mathematics is one of the major subjects which now integrates multimedia
technology to its instructional materials and has become a phenomenon all around
the world. The difficulty of visualizing mathematical concepts has been one of the
major factors for students who find mathematics challenging, especially in
calculating volumes of solid under the topic of integration. The objective of the
project is to investigate on the suitable technique to produce a 3-dimensional (3D)
visualization to demonstrate volumes of solid, and to develop a multimedia
courseware prototype for it. Next, is to evaluate the usability of the prototlpe. The
focus is on the methods of calculating volumes of solid under the topic of
integration, which is a topic in Calculus. A multimedia courseware using
Macromedia Toolbook implementing 2D graphics has been previously developed to
assist the foundation students in UTP to learn integration. To enhance the student's
visualization of calculating volumes of solid, a 3D graphics multimedia courseware
has been developed using the ADDIE model. The tools that are used to develop the
prototype are Blender for 3D modeling and SWiSH Max 4 for layout and
interactivity of courseware. Questionnaire has been dishibuted to get feedback from
the students pertaining to 3 categories which are visualization, navigation and
content. The key findings from the analysis showed that the use of video, images,
graph, audio and colour in the prototype is suitable.