Technology enhanced learning of quantitative critical thinking

A Quantitative Critical Thinking (QCT) software tool was developed in this study to facilitate students’ learning of quantitative critical thinking via repeated practice by chemical engineering students reading a core module called fluid-solid systems. The software tool generated detailed calculation steps to typical engineering design problems encountered in this module that contained weaknesses, flaws or even errors. Students utilized the software tool to practice identifying these weaknesses, flaws or errors in the design solutions and then present a better or correct design by applying the concepts and knowledge acquired in the module. Since the QCT software tool was built upon an existing design software tool that was able to generate the correct, detailed design calculation steps to design problems, students were able to check their own design calculations against those presented by the software tool during this second learning step, thereby engaging in and learning quantitative critical thinking via a repeated practice approach. The software tool was successful in enhancing the performance of second-year undergraduate students in solving a question that required quantitative critical thinking in the final examination of the module. The average percentage scores achieved by students for the question who reported higher frequencies of usage of the software were generally higher than those who reported lower frequencies of usage or did not utilize the software tool throughout the semester.     

Web-Based Teaching of Open-Ended Multidisciplinary Engineering Design Problems

Teaching the engineering design competency is a challenging task in a classical face-to-face classroom environment, and an even greater challenge in a distance learning context. This study presents the activities of a North American Mobility Program (NAMP) project entitled Process Integration for Environmental Control in Engineering Curricula. Seventeen modules were developed using a tiered approach to web-based learning which in combination with classroom-based activities, aim at addressing design engineering know-how. The use of a web-based module employing the tiered-structure in a postgraduate course was evaluated, and it was found that the module enhanced communication amongst students as well as between the instructor and the students.     

Teaching engineering for a changing landscape

Engineering educators face a rapidly changing, and ever more challenging world. Rapidly evolving industry demands, accreditation agencies, and students themselves are calling for an engineering education with integrated multidisciplinary design knowledge, leadership, communication, business, education, entrepreneurship, sustainability, and lifelong learning explicitly included in their undergraduate programs. Students still need the core content knowledge of thermodynamics, mass, energy, and momentum balances and fluxes. They also need integrated socio‐contextual knowledge to evaluate a design for sustainability and demonstrate a net positive social benefit. There is only so much time available in an undergraduate program and learning takes time. These challenges are driving changes to both what and how we teach our students to integrate broader competencies and enhance engineering student graduate attribute achievement. A framework for engineering education includes fundamental and socio‐contextual knowledge integrated with metacognitive and professional skill development. This contribution provides practical ideas for how to infuse these dimensions into courses, support the developing engineering practice, and deepen student engagement with their courses.     

A successful experience with the flipped classroom in the Transport Phenomena course

Transport Phenomena is a core subject in Chemical Engineering studies. Its fundamentals need significant effort to be understood. Furthermore, students must apply theory to solve practical engineering problems, and it is usually problem resolution which has the largest weight in course assessment. However, due to the high amount of theory that must be covered in Transport Phenomena courses, usually little classroom time is reserved for practice and problem-solving skills are not worked in class. This constitutes a serious misalignment between learning activities, expected outcomes and evaluation. In this article, we propose the flipped classroom as a suitable methodology to solve this issue. As a pilot study, we flipped one unit of the Transport Phenomena course of the Bachelor’s Degree in Chemical Engineering. Theory was provided through whiteboard animated video before the classroom sessions. Classroom time was mainly dedicated to participative discussion and problem solving in small groups. Satisfaction questionnaires were used to monitor student perception of learning quality before and after the methodology update. Student judgement on the interest of the subject and the value of the learnt concepts boosted about 20% on average with the flipped classroom. Around 70% of the surveyed students reported that the new methodology increased their motivation and that it helped them to learn both theory and practice. These results indicate that the flipped classroom is suitable for highly-technical classes with a large amount of complex theory, and it helps in the understanding and application of such theory.     

化工软件在化工课程设计中的应用

化工课程设计是化工及相关专业非常重要的一个教学环节,具有综合性、实践性和工程性。本文介绍了ChemDraw、Aspen Plus和ChemCAD等化工软件在化工课程设计中的应用。结果表明,化工软件增强了学生学习兴趣,提高了课程设计的质量,强化了学生的计算机的应用能力,为学生走向未来的工作岗位打下了扎实的基础。     

Chemical engineering design project undertaken through remote learning

The design project represents the culmination of a chemical engineering student’s degree, which is intended to enable students to demonstrate technical competency and achieve team-based learning outcomes. Conventionally the design project is taught through face-to-face learning, however recent circumstances around Covid-19 have required engineering degrees to pivot to remote learning and here the outcome of chemical engineering design project taught through remote learning is reported. The class was tasked with designing processes for vitamin B2, B3 or E production, based on teams of 5 students. The structure of the design project consisted of three major assessments tasks around process feasibility and development, unit operation designs and economics, with students required to undertake group as well as individual assessments. The process by which the design project was taught remotely is presented here; in terms of educator-student engagements, promotion of student interaction within teams, online tools and ensure students had access to appropriate software. The outcome was a successful final year design project for chemical engineering students, which achieved comparable performance outcomes to previous years’ face-to-face teaching as well as demonstration that student interactions within teams are vital to a successful outcome.     

聚合物成型加工原理课程建设实践

成型加工为主,模具设计和材料改性为辅是我校高分子材料专业的专业定位。文章以培养高级应用型人才为目标,针对聚合物成型加工原理课程的特点,围绕优化教学内容,构建与需求相结合的教学模块,采用多媒体教学,搭建多渠道网络平台,积极开展课堂讨论、开设课程设计,建立实习实训基地等,对本院在聚合物成型加工原理课程建设方面的认识与实践进行了总结。     

浅谈化工原理课程教学中学生工程能力培养

阐述了在高等教育大众化下,工科高校化工学生工程能力在教学中如何培养的问题。通过课堂教学、实践性教学,以及竞赛等环节完成学生工程能力的培养,使学生经过在校的四年的学习,真正掌握所学的知识并使之有机地联系,为学生夯实基础,以适应社会经济发展和需求。     

The flip side of teaching process design and process control to chemical engineering undergraduates – And completely online to boot

Two core courses have been given for several years to senior chemical engineering undergraduate students in flipped format, combining pre-class online preparation by the students, “class meetings” with the lecturer, and “active tutorials,” in which groups of students solve exercises. In 2020/21, the COVID-19 lockdown imposed online teaching of these courses to the 54 enrolled students. The objective of work presented in this paper is to explore the impact of the remote flipped classroom design on students' learning experience and achievements, in comparison to the regular flipped class in which only the first preparation phase was online. Because the course was taught completely online, a plethora of data was for the first time made available to support a thorough study of the course teaching protocol, including data from Panopto Analytics®, Zoom and Moodle logs, extensive self-report surveys, as well as actual learning outcomes (exam results). Statistical analyses including multivariate regression were performed to determine which factors most affect learning outcomes. The student surveys indicate that of the three class steps, the “active tutorial” gives students the most confidence in their mastery. Furthermore, analysis indicates that active students think that they benefit more than do passive students, as reflected by both self-reporting and final exam performances. The importance of underlying ability, as indicated by the GPA is a principal conclusion from the regression model, which also identifies attendance of “active tutorials” as a dominant positive effect on exam grades. Two important conclusions of our work are that the online and face-to-face versions of our flipped approach achieve indistinguishable learning outcomes and that students’ perceived confidence in their mastery is highest after the active tutorial.     

Evaluating the problem-solving skills of graduating chemical engineering students

Research has shown that engineering students may not be learning to solve the kinds of complex problems they will be required to solve as practicing engineers (“authentic problems”). Though it is widely believed that we teach engineering problem-solving throughout the undergraduate chemical engineering curriculum, this has not been tested. In this study we use a new instrument for measuring the authentic problem-solving skills of graduating seniors in chemical engineering at two different universities in the context of chemical process design. We find large variations across different areas of process design problem solving as to how expert-like students are in general, and variations between the two institutions. Students were able to identify the same safety issues as experts, but they were conspicuously “nonexpert” in other areas, such as in identifying the important features of a design problem. By examining the respective curricula at the two institutions, we are able to show how the variations both within and across institutions in the specific problem-solving skills students master matches with the practice they get during their undergraduate careers. The results imply that more thoroughly integrating practice in authentic design and problem-solving decisions into the undergraduate curriculum would result in students graduating with capabilities more comparable to those of skilled engineers.     

A portfolio replacement for a traditional final exam in thermodynamics

As in many undergraduate chemical engineering courses, Bucknell University’s Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics course typically had a summative final exam that constituted a substantial portion of a student’s overall grade. In the spring 2020 semester, emergency remote instruction was instituted for the final six weeks of the semester, making a simultaneous timed exam a less attractive option for summative assessment. In place of the exam, students were asked to provide a portfolio of situations, calculations, and reflections documenting that they had achieved core learning outcomes. Assessment of these portfolios revealed comparable student performance on learning outcomes to those documented by exams in previous years. Students reported a generally favorable impression of the portfolio assignment, particularly given the novel remote-instruction circumstances. Portfolios took a similar amount of instructor time to grade using a rubric. This assignment is easily modifiable for use in other chemical engineering courses.     

Contextualized project-based learning for training chemical engineers in graphic expression

This paper describes the planning of a computer-aided design (CAD) laboratory for training chemical engineers in graphic expression. The CAD laboratory was organised into four projects following a project-based learning method. Flipped classroom and contextualised learning were used to motivate the students and promote meaningful learning. The laboratory mainly focused on engaging the students by replicating 2D and 3D plans of common industrial engineering equipment and piping and instrumentation diagrams of industrial facilities. Two surveys carried out before and after the course showed that the student’s perception of their graphic expression skills significantly increased. Gender differences were observed in self-perceived graphic expression skills, particularly in spatial vision. The results showed considerable overall satisfaction with the method, scoring a value of 4.1 ± 0.9 in the Likert scale (maximum 5). Most of the students obtained a score higher than 8 in the CAD laboratory, showing their acquisition of specific competences. The results encouraged us to apply this method to subsequent courses and to extend training in graphic expression to other subjects in the chemical engineering degree. The method followed here can easily be extrapolated to other engineering disciplines.     

Sharing good practice in process safety teaching

The teaching of safety is one of the most important and transferrable subjects in the undergraduate chemical engineering curriculum. However, whilst different institutions have a broadly similar approach to educating students in core topics such as transport processes, approaches to safety teaching are somewhat more variable. This paper describes, analyses and reflects on our approach to safety teaching. It was found that not only are the requirements for accreditation of the degree programme by the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) met, but the majority of the IChemE Safety Centre’s (ISC) recommendations are also covered. Student feedback on the 3rd year Safety and Loss Prevention (S&LP) module showed that the course has been consistently well received by the students, pointing to good course structure and coherence being a significant factor. Analysis of the outcomes of the 2020 final examination for S&LP, using Bloom’s taxonomy, supported existing plans to change the mode of assessment of S&LP to a significant coursework project. Finally, plans for a future revision of the S&LP module are presented to serve as one exemplar of good practice in safety teaching, which not only meets the requirements of the accrediting body and industry, but is also enjoyed by students.     

课程教学中大学生诚信培养的实践研究

诚实守信是做人的基本要求。学生在课程学习过程中也必须做到诚信。文章提出了在课程教学中培养学生诚信品质的问题,从学生平时作业、期末考试等方面构建了一套可操控的学生诚信培养方法,通过教学实践及典型案例分析证明了该方法的有效性。     

Enquiry based learning in chemical engineering curriculum supported by computer aided delivery

Traditional curriculum delivery in higher education has long been considered ineffective in promoting deep learning. Enquiry based learning (EBL) provides an opportunity to develop important professional attributes within the subject-specific content. Computer-aided learning packages can be a useful tool in supporting the development of these skills, as they enable students to explore and gain experience of new software environments in subject-specific context. The development of case studies delivered in Stages 1 and 2 of a chemical engineering degree programme, utilising a number of different software packages is described. The Stage 1 case study develops fundamental principles of chemical engineering whilst Stage 2 case studies concentrate on separation processes and the reactor engineering aspect at the same time requiring the application of the knowledge of statistics and design of experiments, respectively. Student evaluation via questionnaires, focus groups and comments from individual reflective reports, submitted as part of the assessment of the Stage 1 case study activity, demonstrate the impact of these case studies on student learning and their behaviour. Students consider these case studies useful in strengthening their knowledge of the relevant areas of chemical engineering as well as helping them develop skills they consider important from employability point of view.     

Online project-based learning in engineering design: Supporting the acquisition of design skills

In this work, we explore and compare how different online instructional practices can support the acquisition of design skills through the eyes of students in PBL (project-based learning), as well as the impact of such practices on the student performance. Particularly, students quantitatively assessed their perception towards the effectiveness of different online practices at supporting four ways of working in design: identification of a design problem and its constraints, research of potential design solutions, design decision-making, and communication of such decisions in an appropriate format. Student perceptions suggest that effective online PBL in engineering design is underpinned by instructional practices that amalgamate personalised, constructive technical support with immediate formative feedback, and that promote deeper social connections between students and academics. Drawing on the Community of Inquiry framework for online learning, these perceptions appear to be related to the extent to which the social and cognitive presence phenomena is inherent to the specific instructional practice. The combined deployment of such online practices ensures a student performance (71.7%) which is virtually the same as for the previous cohort (72.0%), when design was fully delivered on-campus. Implications for educational practice and transferability with extension to the teaching of different engineering design disciplines and settings are discussed.     

A homogeneous chemical reactor analysis and design laboratory: The reaction kinetics of dye and bleach

An experimental module for senior-level reaction engineering/reactor design students is described. The module is used to characterize the kinetics of dye (food coloring) neutralization by household bleach, and the reactor system is configurable for use in either batch reactor or continuous-stirred tank reactor (CSTR) modes. The reactor temperature, volume, reactant feed rates, and reactant concentrations may be adjusted to enable students to obtain a wide range of kinetic data. Dye concentrations in the reactor are monitored by absorbance spectroscopy, and the kinetic rate law is determined directly from the batch reactor performance data. Students use the completed kinetic rate law to compare experimental steady-state CSTR performance data to the mathematical models derived from reactor design equations. Finally, the students use the kinetic behavior of the system to design a hypothetical plug-flow reactor for the same chemical reaction and a set of stated operational goals.     

化工类学生化工设计能力评价体系的建立

化工设计能力是化工类学生大学阶段综合能力的一种体现,考查学生化工设计能力,建立化工设计能力评价体系是必要的。评价体系包括化工原理等化工基础课程的掌握程度、国家和相关行业法规和设计规范熟练程度、物料衡算和热量衡算能力、化工软件熟练操作水平和化工设计课题实施能力;并通过布置化工设计方面的作业,让学生独立完成一项简单的化工设计,让学生了解化工设计的步骤、化工设计内容以及完成一项设计所需要的知识。基于化工设计课程考核,提出了试卷考试、学生课堂报告、设计实践和答辩等考核方式。     

生物制药工艺学课程建设的研究与实践

生物制药工艺学是制药工程专业的一门主要的专业理论课,在该课程建设的研究和探索中,笔者进行了包括教学内容、多媒体课件、课程网站、实践教学体系、教学方法、考试模式和成绩评价体系等多方面的改革和建设,取得了预期的成果。     

A heterogeneous chemical reactor analysis and design laboratory: The kinetics of ammonia decomposition

A laboratory module for senior-level reaction engineering/reactor design students is described. Students use low-conversion experimental data to explore and characterize the kinetics of ammonia decomposition over various supported catalysts at atmospheric pressure in a packed-bed reactor. Each student team is assigned one of four catalyst types, a reactor temperature, and a series of feed flow rates and compositions. Aggregate data from all student groups is then summarily analyzed per catalyst type. In each experimental trial, the reactor conversion is determined by a thermal conductivity measurement applied to the feed (reactor bypass) and reactor effluent gases. An analysis of the reaction rate across a range of temperatures and varying feed gas partial pressures allows students to test various reaction mechanisms, to suggest rate-determining steps, and to statistically determine rate law parameters. Students typically use the Langmuir–Hinshelwood–Hougen–Watson (LHHW) approach to derive rate law expressions, and determine rate constants through application of the Arrhenius equation. High student numbers (ca. 140) are accommodated through the availability of four experimental stations — each sharing a common source of feed gas and equipped with independent flow controllers and gas analyzers.