A Web Based Complement To Teaching Conservation Of Mass In A Chemical Engineering Curriculum

Web-based instructional modules have been widely used to teach engineering topics. In many cases, the modules are developed for a chosen topic at a specific point in the curriculum. A different approach is being pursued to develop interlinked curriculum components (ICCs), which can be used by studen...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAssociation for Engineering Education - Engineering Library Division Papers p. 12.153.1
Main Authors Yurttas, Lale, Kraus, Zachry, Froyd, Jeffrey, Layne, Jean, El-Halwagi, Mahmoud, Glover, Charles
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published Atlanta American Society for Engineering Education-ASEE 24.06.2007
Subjects
Chemical engineering
Conservation laws
Curricula
Engineering education
Knowledge management
Learning
Modules
Organic chemistry
Students
Synthesis
Task complexity
Teaching
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Summary:Web-based instructional modules have been widely used to teach engineering topics. In many cases, the modules are developed for a chosen topic at a specific point in the curriculum. A different approach is being pursued to develop interlinked curriculum components (ICCs), which can be used by students at many different points in the four-year curriculum. As envisioned during their development, faculty members might use an ICC to introduce students to a set of concepts or use an ICC to provide a review of a set of concepts when they will be used in a more advanced course. The initial ICC prototype focuses on conservation of mass (CoM). A description of the CoM ICC is provided together with preliminary results. A chemical engineering department, with NSF support, is renewing its entire four-year curriculum to achieve four additional student learning outcomes: 1. Apply fundamental ideas over an expanded range of time and length scales 2. Apply ChE fundamental ideas to emerging application areas 3. Construct solutions for more complex, more open-ended synthesis tasks 4. Transfer fundamentals and knowledge to unforeseen future challenges1. To achieve this comprehensive result, the project has adopted three strategic approaches: 1. Curriculum content renewal and development: Extend an existing unifying framework to incorporate expanded time and length scales, encompass emerging and traditional application areas, and increase emphasis on design and synthesis. 2. Student assessment: Develop assessment strategies for the additional learning outcomes. 3. Faculty development: Support faculty members as they assimilate new research on assessment, learning and teaching. Interlinked curriculum components, or ICCs, are a major part of the curriculum renewal process. An ICC is a Web-based resource for teaching and learning as well as a ‘chunk’ of material that is significantly smaller than a typical semester course. Some ICCs focus on ‘narrow and deep’ ideas, e.g., specific application areas or skills; while many ICCs focus on common concepts (e.g. conservation laws) that span courses and application areas. The project team developed the concept and format of ICCs to increase unity, coherence, and efficiency and maintain effectiveness of the new curriculum. This paper focuses on one ICC, which is built around conservation of mass, which appears throughout a ChE curriculum and can be summarized in a deceptively simple statement (where each term applies to the same specific time period):