The University of British Columbia Vantage College offers a pathway for academically qualified international students who do not yet meet the English language admission requirements fordirect entry into UBC. In the summer of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, we taught four courses to a cohort of 64 students scattered across the globe. The courses were taught online and asynchronously, raising coordination challenges in terms of class schedule and delivery, assessment, and student support. To address those challenges, we developed a highly structured weekly schedule, specifying lecture and assessment days, as well as regular, synchronous office hours. We met weekly to keep each other updated about the progress of students. Students falling behind in multiple courses were reported in an “early alert” system: a university-specific resource through which students are contacted by health and wellness staff. A midterm survey was conducted and the feedback was generally positive. Final results in the courses were varied, with some comparable
Canadian universities are devoting more and more resources to develop K-12 engineering education outreach programs. The School of Engineering at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus offers a variety of outreach and community programs for students of all ages. This paper provides details on the DiscoverE Engineering Summer Program which has been delivered since 2016. The objective of the program is to introduce students general design processes through hands-on civil, electrical, and mechanical engineering projects. The overall goal is to foster a passion in engineering and at the same time attract students who have already had an interest in engineering and are eager to learn more about the discipline. The program is taught by faculty members and exposes students to a variety of hands-on projects in civil, electrical and mechanical engineering. This paper will provide curriculum details for each topic and reflect on the student learning experience based on observations. Future qualitative plans on the measure of the impact of this program qualitatively will be explored.
received his B.Eng and M.Eng degrees from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. He taught college-level engineering for more than a decade before joining a consulting group, working on environmental and water technologies. In 2010 he joined NTU as a research associate and at the same time embarked on his Ph.D. studies, carrying out research which involved the tow testing and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation of a wind turbine above a forward facing step. Upon completion, he joined the National University of Singapore, where he taught mechanical design related courses. He also started work on enclosed narrow-track electric vehicles and carried out wind tunnel testing and CFD simulations to optimise the aerodynamics of the enclosure. He joined the University of British Columbia-Okanagan campus as an instructor in 2016.
First year engineering students at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, take the Fundamentals of Sustainable Engineering Design course as part of the suite of common courses for all engineering students regardless of discipline. The largest assessment components of the course are the final exam (40%) and the design project (40%). For the design project, teams of 4 – 6 students build a scaled-down prototype of a Well Ventilated yet Energy Efficient Room (WeVeyEER) that must be able to maintain its interior temperature at 10°C above ambient and at the same time continuously exchange stale air from within with fresh air from outside. It also has to meet load-bearing, size and power supply constraints. The energy consumption, rate of air exchange and weight are parameters for comparing performance of the prototypes. The majority of teams (55 out of 64) could achieve the requirements. Feedback about the project was mixed, with 57 positive and 56 negative comments.
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