Bridging Courses in Chemistry and Physics for Engineering Students

Abstract

Throughout the 1980s there has been a remarkable rise in the retention rate of Australian students in secondary education. Although the absolute numbers of students undertaking the traditional upper secondary school preparatory subjects for Engineering courses has been increasing, their proportion as a percentage of the whole Year 12 group has simultaneously been decreasing.In the face of this situation, the Faculty of Engineering at Monash decided in 1989 to ask the Faculty of Education to offer special bridging courses in chemistry and physics to students who had the appropriate high entry scores, but who had not studied either one or the other of these subjects during their Year 12 program.After an initial period of data collection involving researching the chemistry and physics courses, two intensive special bridging courses to be taken over one semester were designed to meet the needs of these students. The first four years of the program have produced very encouraging results. The paper describes the rationale behind the design of these courses and the range of teaching and learning strategies that have been employed. It includes a discussion of some of the conditions that are believed to be necessary to ensure the success of such a bold educational experiment.

A New Bridging “Introduction to University Chemistry” Module for Cardiff University

“…Other institutions have introduced semester-long introductions, , but this model was rejected in favor of an up-front approach, as introduced elsewhere in person and online . The advantages of concentrating solely on an introduction at the beginning of university were felt to be over-riding.…”

Enhancing the transition? – effects of a tertiary bridging course in chemistry

“…For the widespread mathematics bridging courses, results of several studies indicate that participants of the course withdraw from final exams less often (Poladian and Nicholas, 2013) and achieve better exam results than those students who did not enroll in the bridging course (Poladian and Nicholas, 2013;Grabowski and Kaspar, 2014;Greefrath and Hoever, 2016). However, only a handful of studies exist for chemistry-specific bridging courses, among which the majority deal especially with the development and evaluation of one-semester long programs (Mitchell and de Jong, 1994;Chittleborough, 1998;Jones and Gellene, 2005;Gadbury-Amyot et al, 2009). So far, little attention has been payed to the short and compact chemistry bridging courses (Botch et al, 2007;Busker et al, 2011;Schmid et al, 2012).…”

“…Currently, only a few studies exist that systematically examine short-and long-term effects of chemistry-specific bridging courses. The knowledge gained so far regarding the efficacy of preparatory courses for chemistry students can be traced back to studies that differ greatly in conception, duration, content and participants (Mitchell and de Jong, 1994;Chittleborough, 1998;Jones and Gellene, 2005;Botch et al, 2007;Gadbury-Amyot et al, 2009;Busker et al, 2011;Schmid et al, 2012;Dockter et al, 2017). Although the results of these studies, which are discussed in more detail in the literature review section, have provided important insights into the effectiveness of subject-related bridging courses, a difficulty in the evaluation of such courses is also shown here, since a large number of variables can be considered, which makes it difficult to compare the findings of the studies among each other.…”

Designing a new physics laboratory programme for first-year engineering students

“…Unfortunately, much of the laboratory experience of students, especially in their first year, focuses on 'recipe' experiments which offer limited challenges and often stifle their innate creative talents (White 1996, Mitchell and de Jong 1994, Boud et al 1989. Earlier, a group at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) embarked upon a successful reform of the physics laboratory work for science undergraduates Cheary 1993, Cheary et al 1994).…”