Conference Session

New Learning Paradigms I

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Warren Hull, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge; Warren Waggenspack, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge; Lillian B Bowles, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge; David Bowles, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge; Tiffany Walter Choplin, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

to meet the demands of growing enrollment. This was viewed as anundesirable situation for a major research university; therefore, it was deemed necessary toreduce the large number of graduate assistants and non-tenured instructors. Of course, thisrequired major restructuring of the English Department, which phased out the technical writingcourses being offered. Since engineering relied upon these courses for all of its disciplines, thisforced a re-thinking of how students would receive this type of skill.The loss of technical writing was not met with a sense of loss of historic proportions becausethere had been many engineering faculty members who had already questioned the value of thisresource. Among the issues raised were:• Return on

Conference Session

New Learning Paradigms II

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Laura Hahn, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Alan Hansen, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

was arranged to take place in South Africa for the firsttime in the summer of 2004, and was offered again in 2006 and 2008. Approximately the sameformat for the three visits was employed. The procedure followed in the program was first of allto set up a collaboration with the School of Bioresources Engineering and EnvironmentalHydrology (BEEH) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) in South Africa to facilitatestudent interaction via teamwork on mutually selected capstone design projects. Bothundergraduate and graduate students were recruited from the Department of Agricultural andBiological Engineering at a large, public mid-western research-extensive university during thefall semester prior to the summer visit.Early in the spring