Tampa, Florida
June 15, 2019
June 15, 2019
June 19, 2019
Civil Engineering
17
10.18260/1-2--33050
https://peer.asee.org/33050
796
Dr. Zaurin obtained his Bachelor Degree in Civil Engineering from 'Universidad de Oriente' in Venezuela in 1985. In 1990 he earned a MSc in Information Technology. He has been civil engineering professor with teaching experience at his Alma Mater (Universidad de Oriente) from 1986 until 2002. Dr. Zaurin moves to USA and completes another MSc, this time Structural and Geotechnical Engineering. Upon completing multidisciplinary PhD on Structural Health Monitoring Using Computer Vision, he joined UCF in 2010 as a Lecturer at the Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering (CECE) Department. He has published computer vision related research work in prominent journals and still mentors graduate students in this particular area. Dr. Zaurin has been very active in the STEM area as he is one of the selected faculty members for the NSF funded EXCEL and NSF funded COMPASS programs at UCF. Dr. Zaurin received College Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2015 and 2019, TIP Award in 2016, and also received 4 Golden Apple Awards for Undergraduate Teaching for a record four years in a row. During Fall 2013 he created IDEAS (Interdisciplinary Display for Engineering Analysis Statics) which is a project based learning activity designed specifically for promoting creativity, team-work, and presentation skills for undergraduate sophomore and junior students, as well as by exposing the students to the fascinating world of scientific/technological research based engineering. IDEAS is becoming the cornerstone event for the sophomore engineering students at UCF: from fall 2013 to fall 2018 approximately 3000 students have created, designed, presented, and defended around 900 projects and papers.
“Tell me and I will forget, teach me and I will remember, involve me and I will learn”. This powerful quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin is the cornerstone for the study presented in this paper. Teaching and Learning engineering is not an easy task, especially for large size gateway courses. Engineering education researchers agree that a purely traditional lecture-based learning environment does not adequately prepare students to succeed in the collaborative and challenging environment existing in engineering careers. Same researchers emphasize the need of incorporating high impact learning practices to help students to succeed. This study presents some very promising results of incorporating collaborative active learning hands-on project-based homework as a strategy for improving the students’ success in a large Sophomore Engineering Class: Engineering Analysis Statics. Exam results were compiled during several consecutive semesters with the objective of establishing a baseline and identifying the most challenging topics for the students. Hands-on project-based collaborative homework was specifically design to improve the comprehension of these nebulous areas. In addition to the traditional pencil-and-paper or online homework, students were offered the opportunity of forming small groups to create, test, and analyze their own real-life physical models of some assigned problems. In addition, students were asked to record and submit a short video explaining their models, discussing their experimental results, and comparing them with theoretical hand calculations. Assessment showed a very marked difference between the groups of students doing the hands-on project-based homework compared with those that only submitted the traditional assignments.
Zaurin, R. (2019, June), Learning by Doing: Collaborative Active Learning Hands-On Project-Based Homework for a Large Gateway Engineering Class Paper presented at 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Tampa, Florida. 10.18260/1-2--33050
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