What Are Educational Products?

Educational products are instructional materials, tools, and resources developed to support learning, teaching, and professional development across academic and technical disciplines. In the context of engineering and technology, they include textbooks, online courses, simulation software, laboratory kits, assessment instruments, and multimedia content designed to convey technical knowledge in structured, reproducible formats. Professional societies such as IEEE produce and curate educational products alongside universities, publishers, and commercial training providers.

The category is broad by design. A set of laboratory exercises for a circuits course, a self-paced e-learning module on power systems, a set of practice problems for a licensure examination, and a workshop curriculum for middle school science teachers all qualify as educational products, despite their differences in audience, format, and delivery mechanism. What they share is a designed pedagogical intent: they exist to change what a learner knows or can do.

Print and Digital Learning Materials

Textbooks and reference manuals represent the oldest and most widely used category of educational products in engineering. Publishers such as Wiley and Springer distribute technical texts developed by faculty authors, many of whom are also active researchers. The shift toward digital formats has transformed this category: electronic textbooks now allow embedded video, interactive problem sets, and real-time feedback, features unavailable in print. The IEEE Xplore digital library also functions as an educational resource, giving students and practitioners access to conference papers, journal articles, and standards that are themselves instructional in character.

Simulation and modeling software occupies a distinct subcategory. Tools such as MATLAB, SPICE, and ANSYS are used in courses ranging from signal processing to structural mechanics, allowing students to explore system behavior without requiring physical prototypes.

Online Courses and Continuing Education Modules

The growth of online learning platforms has substantially expanded the market for digital educational products. The IEEE eLearning Library offers peer-reviewed courses in fields such as cybersecurity, machine learning, and power electronics, allowing engineers to earn Continuing Education Units (CEUs) at their own pace. These courses are reviewed by subject matter experts and assessed through the IEEE Learning Network, providing a credentialing mechanism that employers recognize.

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) from platforms such as Coursera and edX include content developed by engineering faculty from major universities. These courses often draw tens of thousands of enrollees globally, making them among the highest-scale educational products in existence.

Assessment and Credentialing Tools

Assessment products serve two audiences: institutions measuring student learning outcomes for accreditation purposes, and individuals seeking credentials for professional advancement. Practice examinations for the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam, preparation materials for IEEE certification programs, and competency rubrics developed under ABET's criteria are all examples of assessment-oriented educational products.

ABET criteria require engineering programs to demonstrate student outcomes using measurable indicators, driving demand for assessment instruments that align course-level performance data with program-level accreditation requirements.

Applications

Educational products have applications in a range of contexts, including:

• Undergraduate and graduate instruction in engineering and computing programs
• Professional development for practicing engineers seeking CEUs or new technical skills
• Pre-university STEM outreach, including competition preparation and teacher training
• Corporate training and upskilling programs in technology-intensive industries
• Examination preparation for professional licensure and IEEE certification