Flipping classrooms, sowing seeds and developing confidence: teaching engineering judgement to undergraduate engineering students

Deesha Chadha; Klaus Hellgardt

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Conference: 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Publication Date: August 23, 2022
Start Date: June 26, 2022
End Date: June 29, 2022
Conference Session: Utilizing Technology to Train Chemical Engineering Students
Page Count: 13
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--40549
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/40549
Download Count: 446

Paper Authors

biography

Deesha Chadha Imperial College London, London

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I am currently a senior teaching fellow in the department of chemical engineering, Imperial College London. I completed my bachelors degree in chemical engineering, followed by doctoral studies in engineering education. My current research interests include curriculum change, professional skills and EDI in engineering education.

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Klaus Hellgardt

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Abstract

Various accreditation documents constantly suggest that engineering judgement is a core facet of a graduate engineers skills set (for example I.ChemE, I.MechE, ABET). It is of great importance to all engineering disciplines, and yet as educators we are given little guidance on how best to develop engineering judgement in our students. However, it is not always clear that students have sufficiently developed their judgement by the time they graduate. As such, more work needs to be done in understanding both how engineering judgement can be developed and the obstacles in place that often prevent students from doing so. In our department, we explored this notion of engineering judgement. We adopted a grounded theory approach to answer our central research question: how can engineering judgement be taught effectively? The investigation was conducted in a chemical engineering department, although we fully expect the results of this research to be equally applicable to other disciplines within engineering. By utilising a grounded theory approach, we considered our research question as an open one whereby the categories that emerged from data would enable us to formulate a framework (without pre-conception) for developing judgement. Interviews were conducted with individuals who we felt had good cross-over experience in both academia and industry, and could appreciate how engineering was developed in education and applied in work scenarios. A total of 18 participants were interviewed, at which point saturation of data was reached, through a process of theoretical sampling and in line with grounded theory approaches used in social science research. In considering the teaching strategies, the categories emerged to reveal big-picture strategies that encompassed an overall process of thinking and organising which can guide students’ engagement with material (e.g. really knowing and understanding the problem that needs solving before breaking it down, and ensuring engineering judgement is part of the marking criteria). Similarly, classroom-based teaching strategies that focused on more specific techniques related to the delivery of material (e.g. design project with stipulations, flipped classrooms with teacher as facilitator, and adopting a multi-disciplinary approach) also revealed themselves as categories from an analysis of the data. This work has wide implications for how undergraduate engineering students can be taught in order to develop their engineering judgement.

Citation
Format

Chadha, D., & Hellgardt, K. (2022, August), Flipping classrooms, sowing seeds and developing confidence: teaching engineering judgement to undergraduate engineering students Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--40549

TY - CPAPER
AB - Various accreditation documents constantly suggest that engineering judgement is a core facet of a graduate engineers skills set (for example I.ChemE, I.MechE, ABET). It is of great importance to all engineering disciplines, and yet as educators we are given little guidance on how best to develop engineering judgement in our students. However, it is not always clear that students have sufficiently developed their judgement by the time they graduate. As such, more work needs to be done in understanding both how engineering judgement can be developed and the obstacles in place that often prevent students from doing so.
In our department, we explored this notion of engineering judgement. We adopted a grounded theory approach to answer our central research question: how can engineering judgement be taught effectively? The investigation was conducted in a chemical engineering department, although we fully expect the results of this research to be equally applicable to other disciplines within engineering. By utilising a grounded theory approach, we considered our research question as an open one whereby the categories that emerged from data would enable us to formulate a framework (without pre-conception) for developing judgement. Interviews were conducted with individuals who we felt had good cross-over experience in both academia and industry, and could appreciate how engineering was developed in education and applied in work scenarios. A total of 18 participants were interviewed, at which point saturation of data was reached, through a process of theoretical sampling and in line with grounded theory approaches used in social science research.
In considering the teaching strategies, the categories emerged to reveal big-picture strategies that encompassed an overall process of thinking and organising which can guide students’ engagement with material (e.g. really knowing and understanding the problem that needs solving before breaking it down, and ensuring engineering judgement is part of the marking criteria). Similarly, classroom-based teaching strategies that focused on more specific techniques related to the delivery of material (e.g. design project with stipulations, flipped classrooms with teacher as facilitator, and adopting a multi-disciplinary approach) also revealed themselves as categories from an analysis of the data. This work has wide implications for how undergraduate engineering students can be taught in order to develop their engineering judgement.

AU - Deesha Chadha
AU - Klaus Hellgardt
CY - Minneapolis, MN
DA - 2022/08/23
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Flipping classrooms, sowing seeds and developing confidence: teaching engineering judgement to undergraduate engineering students
UR - https://peer.asee.org/40549
DO - 10.18260/1-2--40549
ER -