A learner's journey towards a chemical engineering degree

Abstract

The overall goal of any engineering program is to maximize the capacity of its graduates to succeed academically and professionally. We describe how a path can be designed for learners to proceed towards this goal and describe the rationale used to create its foundational steps. It begins with a summer bridge program for incoming students before entering university as first-year undergraduates. Since the prior knowledge of these learners is not uniform, the bridge program is designed to provide opportunities for them to become better prepared academically for first-year engineering. These students thus transition to university-level learning more smoothly. In their first year, students work in groups to tackle socially relevant projects through an integrated 13-unit course that is designed based on integrated learning, collaboration, problem-solving, community engagement, and communication. Since teaching and learning using this approach is unusual and challenging, the curriculum must be carefully designed and implemented with adequate resources in place, particularly for cohorts of more than 1000 students in our case who work in small four or five-member teams. In upper years, learning in chemical engineering is enriched by conducting discovery-based workshops where students work on engineering problems requiring the application of new mathematical concepts. Finally, we describe a hybrid method for testing and assessment, where learners take tests individually, following which they are also provided with the option to retake these tests in groups to promote collaborative learning. Retaking tests in teams enhances the ability of learners to reflect and learn from mistakes and promotes peer mentoring.

Preface for the Doing Things Differently Special Section

“…Diverse organizations are more successful, and male allyship can significantly advance culture change to reach equality for all underrepresented groups. The next four papers discuss moving past conventional teaching approaches and provide many ideas, including how polarity management maximizes team potential and leads to innovation [3] ; real-world examples and teambased test retakes promote student engagement and success [4] ; and open-ended laboratory problems [5] and multidisciplinary capstone projects, [6] both with an industrial focus, promote learning and desirable engineering traits but require different course logistics. The final three papers discuss how to properly collect, analyze, and interpret data, not fear "failed" experiments, and avoid zombie ideas [7] ; the benefits and challenges of disseminating results through open science [8] ; and how to stimulate innovation in graduate students through open-ended exploration.…”

Improving Student Perceptions of Learning through Collaborative Testing

“…In content-heavy biomedical engineering courses, high-stakes assessments such as tests or exams often elicit anxiety, low expectancy to succeed, and low self-efficacy for students, corresponding to decreased motivation. Collaborative testing has been demonstrated to improve students' performance [8]- [10], leading to the hypothesis that collaborative testing also improves students' perceptions of their learning environment based on development of effective learning strategies.…”

“…Test scores are typically computed as a weighted average of the individual and group scores. Collaborative testing has been demonstrated to improve performance and motivation of students [8]- [10]. However, it is not clear whether collaborative testing reduces affective components of student motivation such as test anxiety or whether situating collaborative learning in a test environment impacts students' learning strategies.…”

Improvement in Student Learning Objectives from Group Discussions Between Exam Sittings

“…This is anecdotally reported in tutoring sessions, where concepts mastered quickly often fade, but those which required correction persist in a student's memory. To scale this concept beyond 1:1 tutoring sessions, multiple authors have reported on assigning students to retake tests, often in teams or as a takehome exam (Felder et al, 2000;Fengler & Ostafichuk, 2015;Nease et al, 2021). Each of these investigators describe potential benefits of such practices, but they do not rigorously examine their effects on learning outcomes.…”

“…Radical changes to the use of assessments in courses have recently been promoted, such as ungrading (Kohn & Blum, 2020;Stommel, 2020), standards-based grading (Lewis, 2020), and unlimited resubmissions (Posner, 2011). In engineering, some instructors have offered students an opportunity to earn credit for redoing incorrect answers on exams (Felder et al, 2000;Fengler & Ostafichuk 2015;Nease et al, 2021). Professors may allow students to revise their responses to the same set of questions with or without additional support.…”