The arrival of the World Wide Web signaled the beginning of fundamental changes in how teaching, training, and self-directed learning will occur at all ages and stages of life. Because of its versatility as a learning tool in the realm of higher education, the Web has woven its way into engineering classes and laboratories. As a supplement to a Chemical Engineering project in an Introduction to Engineering Systems course at the University of Notre Dame, we are developing a self-paced, web-based learning tool that primarily demonstrates feedback control, and the use of mass balance equations with reaction to describe a chemical reactor, and secondarily demonstrates basic aspects of fluid flow. Included in the learning tool is a set of reference materials that explain technical concepts, a web-based simulator of a continuously flowing reactor in which the neutralization of acetic acid with sodium hydroxide is carried out, and an assessment engine built around the simulator to measure if students acquire simple skills, and follow students through their work to see if the path to a solution seems logical. This learning tool will be used by over 300 first-year engineering students who go on to major in various engineering disciplines. Because the learning tool is web-based, it will also available to any institution that wishes to use it. The project is being developed with support of the NSF through the Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) program. In this paper we discuss our motivation for creating this tool, its design, and the current status of the implementation. Goals and Objectives The goal of this project is to provide an example of and a template for education modules in engineering that integrate experimental work, web-based text and resources and numerical simulation of the laboratory experiments with a web-based assessment tool, based on primary trait analysis [1] to evaluate student progress. With a properly designed web-based evaluation tool, it should be possible not only to measure if students have acquired simple skills, but also to follow students through their work on complex problems to see if the path to a solution makes sense. In doing this, the instructor can evaluate and even quantitatively measure, the degree to which students have mastered the process of solving, e.g., design problems that require integration of understanding and knowledge by the student. The ”deliverables” of this project will be complete plans, materials and purchased equipment list for a ~0.5 l sized acid neutralization reactor, extensive web-based textual materials on the main P ge 844.1 Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2003, American Society for Engineering Education topic including pages appropriate for reading with various web-links and PowerPoint lectures on the key topics, a complete Java-based simulation of the laboratory experiment that would allow extensive exploration of the behavior of the reactor and the controller, and integrated assessment tools to track and analyze student progress. A hierarchical approach to the text materials will allow more advanced students to find new, deeper, facets of the problems to investigate. Further, the experimental setup will be robust enough to allow both basic and advanced studies. To evaluate student progress to understanding the information, the simulator will have an assessment engine wrapped around it so that instructors will be able to quantitatively evaluate student progress. Of the main topics of the proposal, feedback control is central to mechanical, electrical and chemical engineering, use of balance equations is central to chemical and environmental and has applications in other fields, fluid flow (to feed the reactor) and mixing are of interest to chemical and mechanical engineers. Further it is emphasized that we are not just trying to produce this one comprehensive module, but to determine the key elements for such modules and how they are put together to most effectively enhance student learning and assessment of this learning. While the preliminary work for this proposal has been done for first year students at Notre Dame, our interest is general and is intended to address: (a) Engineering student retention— which is a continuing problem at Notre Dame as well in the US in general—primarily by exciting students, at an early stage of their educational careers, about the creative as well as the analytical nature of engineering and (b) enhance student learning by providing a well integrated package in which the web-based textual materials define the topic, carefully organize the presentation, and give feedback to students and faculty through “quizzing”, a powerful simulation package that allows students to efficiently explore (letting them determine a path to their learning) all aspects of reactor and controller and a physical experiment that gives “handon” experience and lets them see how engineering models and engineering experiments are used together to solve engineering problems. The evaluation of this project will be done at the within the context of “EG111/112: Introduction to Engineering Systems” course [2] by tracking student progress to the learning goals. As this is a new course that is receiving a lot of attention from the University administration, considerable effort will be put on assessment of all aspects of instruction and student learning.