Arlington, Virginia
March 12, 2023
March 12, 2023
March 14, 2023
Professional Engineering Education Papers
10
10.18260/1-2--44989
https://peer.asee.org/44989
95
Dr. Gafar Elamin is an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at The Citadel. He earned his PhD and Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from North Carolina A & T State University, and his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from University of Khartoum in Sudan.
Before his current position, Dr. Elamin has worked for the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, King Faisal University in Saudi Arabia, and Bechtel Power Corporation in Frederick, Maryland.
Dr. Elamin teaches courses in the Thermal/Fluid and Heat Transfer areas as well as introductory engineering courses. His research interests include computational fluid dynamics and algorithms development.
Dr. Elamin is a registered professional engineer in Maryland State.
Contact Information
Office: Grimsley Hall, Room 106 BA
Telephone: (843)- 953-2612
Email: gelamin@citadel.edu
The teaching of thermodynamics and fluid mechanics courses is a challenging task for most instructors. The main challenge arises from the student’s preexisting perception about the difficulty of the thermal-fluid sciences. With this initial timidity in said student’s mind, teaching the thermodynamics and fluid mechanics as blended course adds another layer of nervousness and frustration to the student. While most institutions teach thermodynamics and fluid mechanics as separate courses, some have integrated the two courses into a two-course sequence, Thermal-Fluid Systems I and II, recently. The Mechanical Engineering department at our institution was established in 2014 and adapted the integrated model of teaching courses as a blended two-course sequence. After teaching these subjects in this model for eight years (2014-2022) by many different instructors, the Mechanical Engineering department at (Institution name) is planning to assess the effectiveness of this teaching model. The goal of this paper is to assess the advantages and disadvantages of the blended model for teaching the thermodynamics/fluid mechanics subjects as compared to the separate course teaching model. Instructors will analyze students’ performance on exams, laboratory reports, and homework over the past years to gage the level of students’ understanding of both subjects (thermodynamics and fluid mechanics). In addition to instructor analysis and findings, students’ feedback will be incorporated in the study via a survey distributed to students who took the two phases of the blended course. The result of this work will dictate the department decision to keep the blended model or to separate the thermodynamics and fluid mechanics courses and will be implemented in the next Mechanical Engineering curriculum revision at (institution name).
Elamin, G. A. (2023, March), Assessing the Teaching of Thermodynamics and Fluid Mechanics as a Blended Course at The Citadel Paper presented at ASEE Southeast Section Conference, Arlington, Virginia. 10.18260/1-2--44989
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