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Main Menu Session 1451

“Hyper-Active Learning” in an Upper Level Engineering Classroom

Philip J. Parker

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering University of Wisconsin-Platteville

Introduction

During the Spring 2001 semester, I “abandoned” the use of traditional lectures in CE433 (Solid and Hazardous Waste Engineering), and instead required students to fill out worksheets during class time. This class contained 15 students. The students were mostly juniors and seniors and were either environmental engineering majors or civil engineering majors with an environmental engineering emphasis.

This project was initiated as an effort to solve the following problems:

1. I have found that students do very little of the assigned readings in upper level courses. Perhaps I may perpetuate this problem by supplying the students with all the necessary information in lecture! 2. I prefer to use lectures to discuss concepts rather than define vocabulary, explain the intricacies of regulatory rules, list out code requirements, etc. However, I cannot lecture on concepts if students don’t understand these basics. 3. Although my lecture skills have been highly rated by students and they appreciate my enthusiasm and the active nature of my lectures, I still note that many students are not engaged in the lecture. 4. Another problem I view with lectures is that students can gain a certain amount of confidence and familiarity with the material, and mistake this superficial learning as the same as deep understanding.

Worksheet Procedure

The basis of solving the above problems was to require students to fill in worksheets during the class period. One worksheet was designed for each class period, and was typically two pages long. The worksheets were based on my previous lecture notes for the course. Thus, nearly every topic covered previously in lecture was covered on the worksheets. Students were instructed that if they filled out the worksheets carefully, the result would be a complete version of the notes, with my questions serving as the outline.

Proceedings of the 2002 American Society of Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2001, American Society for Engineering Education

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Parker, P. (2002, June), "Hyper Active Learning" In An Upper Level Engineering Classroom Paper presented at 2002 Annual Conference, Montreal, Canada. 10.18260/1-2--10755