2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The integration of built-in instructional tools and guided overlays within modern engineering software provides a powerful avenue for teaching core engineering concepts to early-year engineering students. These features lower the barrier to entry by embedding context-sensitive help, step-by-step guidance, and interactive content directly within the simulation environment. Instead of attempting to pair textbook learning with software implementation, students can learn fundamental engineering principles while actively engaging with the software. This seamless blending of simulation, visualization, and instruction fosters intuitive understanding, accelerates skill development, and builds student confidence in applying computational tools to real engineering problems.

This paper introduces two ways of embedding instructional content within engineering software. Firstly, we discuss an innovative method for teaching core engineering fundamentals through a Python-extension–based virtual laboratory built via the Extension Builder in Ansys Discovery. The virtual lab focuses on static I-beam analysis—a foundational mechanical engineering topic—through a guided, interactive environment. Educators can use the Extension Builder to embed context-sensitive guidance, step-by-step workflows, and intuitive buttons directly into Ansys Discovery’s interface. This enables students to readily explore beam models, material properties, geometry selection, boundary conditions, and visualized outputs such as stress and strain distributions.

This integrated instructional environment enables early-year engineering students—with minimal prior exposure to finite element analysis—to move seamlessly from theoretical concepts like stress, strain, and Euler–Bernoulli beam theory to hands-on simulation. The scripted guidance offers continuous support within the software, reducing cognitive overhead and cultivating students’ computational thinking. Educators, meanwhile, benefit from the flexibility to tailor learning paths rapidly—adding custom tutorial steps, automating modeling tasks, and reinforcing analytical comparisons.

Secondly, we explore new instructional overlays which have been added to Ansys Discovery as part of its ‘interactive tour’ contextual functionality. For many early-year engineering and design students, simulation can seem confusing or impenetrable. Discovery’s overlay functionality was initially developed to deliver embedded tutorials and user help, covering the basic use of the software, but is now being expanded to include illustration of fundamental physics concepts. This can demystify simulation for students by illuminating the ‘black box’ with clear and contextually specific explanations of concepts, principles and definitions. The new instructional overlays focus on the ‘why?’ rather than the ‘how-to?’ As students complete the structured interactive tours their knowledge is scaffolded by the overlays which are integrated into simple simulations. The overlays also fulfil a secondary function for more experienced students or lifelong learners, acting as optional reference/revision materials within the software.

Educational learning theories advocate learning as the active construction of understanding and knowledge via the creation of tangible products within a structured learning environment. Leaning is not dependent on the finished product but rather the interactions between the student and the learning environment. This is where personal meaningful understandings are forged. The I-beam extension and the instructional overlays aim to provide this type of environment for learning within a simulation tool.

Finally, the paper will present initial feedback from the use of Ansys Discovery in the classroom with the I-Beam extension or the instructional overlays, looking at lessons learned and next steps to develop further embedded learning environments in such software.

In summary, this work demonstrates how the synergy of low code Python-powered Extension Builder and on-screen instructional overlays in Ansys Discovery can transform traditional engineering education—creating scalable, interactive, and pedagogically rich virtual laboratories for early-career engineering students. By bridging analytical theory with real-time visualization and embedded instruction, this model of software enhancement offers a scalable, pedagogically robust approach to teaching foundational engineering concepts through simulation tools.