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Teaching an Accelerated Course via Team Activities: Assessment and Peer Rating of the Team Impact

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Conference

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

New Orleans, Louisiana

Publication Date

June 26, 2016

Start Date

June 26, 2016

End Date

June 29, 2016

ISBN

978-0-692-68565-5

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Engineering Physics Technical Session 1

Tagged Division

Engineering Physics & Physics

Page Count

16

DOI

10.18260/p.26015

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/26015

Download Count

435

Paper Authors

biography

Bala Maheswaran Northeastern University

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Bala Maheswaran, PhD
Northeastern University
367 Snell Engineering Center
Boston, MA 02115

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Abstract

Engineering physics courses are the key gateway courses in engineering. Most engineering students take one year of engineering physics courses in the freshman year. Teaching Physics is always fun, but teaching the same course contents in little less than half the time in an accelerated form is complicated for instructors, and learning the concepts and solving problems in an accelerated structure is challenging for students. To reverse this trend, and to make learning interesting and fun, I restructured the course with weekly in-class team activities and a final team project. The final team project was done outside the class and presented in class. One of the objectives of this approach is to facilitate working on team activities in class and on project related work outside the class, which eventually enables students to develop the habit of helping each other to understand the basic engineering physics concepts in a give and take manner. This reorganized structure was tested in a small class environment and in a summer accelerated course. This report will present detailed information about the teams' weekly in-class activities; team structure, assignments, time constraints, outcome and student feedback via assessment. At the end of the semester, a survey was done to see how much the teams' weekly project helped our students to learn the course materials, and evaluate student interactions, This team learning setting is intended to replace the flip class room concept for the accelerated courses. About forty students participated in the survey. The data was analyzed using a spreadsheet and the outcome will be reported in this paper. The outcome of this study will be beneficial for other educators who search for more impactful teaching methods.

Maheswaran, B. (2016, June), Teaching an Accelerated Course via Team Activities: Assessment and Peer Rating of the Team Impact Paper presented at 2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana. 10.18260/p.26015

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