Minneapolis, MN
August 23, 2022
June 26, 2022
June 29, 2022
Professional Skills and Community Building in Chemical Engineering Education
17
10.18260/1-2--41889
https://peer.asee.org/41889
258
Christopher V.H.-H. Chen, Ph.D., is a Senior Assistant Director of Graduate Student Programs and Services at the Center for Teaching and Learning and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at Columbia University. His teaching and research interests include the application of case- and problem-based approaches to STEM learning experiences, the promise and challenges of online learning, how social and emotional interventions improve engineering education, and preparing graduate students as future change leaders within the academy.
In response to COVID-19, we redesigned our introductory chemical engineering course to fit our students’ current learning context. This adapted course for 30 sophomores and juniors not only had to address our students’ academic and curricular requirements, but also meet their social and community needs. As an entry point into the discipline–and the very first engineering class our students would take–we sought to foster connections between students that would support them through a semester many students find challenging, and continue with them when they join the major. Drawing from the community of inquiry framework, and strategies to build social presence in online courses, we implemented changes to meet these challenges. We assigned students to learning teams (4-5 students) in which they engaged in Zoom breakouts, and group homework and projects throughout the term. We also exchanged a midterm for a “community contribution” grade that incentivized participation during the Zoom sessions, engagement in discussion boards, and development of student-created class resources (e.g., video problem walkthroughs, study guides). After implementing these changes, and others necessary to adapt this face-to-face course to an online format, we saw an improvement in student learning outcomes across multiple measures. This included improved final exam performance–with effect sizes (Cohen’s d) of >0.4–and increases in student-reported feelings of learning and course quality. Students also reported that the student-created resources and videos to be valuable to their learning, which was supported by video analytics data, where student-created videos were viewed just as often as optional instructor-created videos, and surveys that showed these student-created resources as the most helpful to student learning in the course. Due to the success of these changes, we have continued with the changes brought about by our redesign, and would encourage our colleagues to consider how to center community building within the design of engineering courses as we have shown in this case.
Chen, C. (2022, August), Redesigning to Foster Community in an Online Introductory Chemical Engineering Course Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--41889
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