scholarly journals First to Second Year Identity Emergence in Industrial and Chemical Engineering Students

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacqueline McNeil ◽  
Erin Gerber ◽  
Gerold Willing ◽  
Mary Mills
Author(s):  
Louise Meunier ◽  
Nicolas Hudon

At the undergraduate level, chemical engineering students must learn how to solve complex problems, but many students fail to apply effective problem-solving techniques taught in fundamental science courses. Because these techniques are not consistently presented and reinforced, instructors and students often interpret poor capabilities in problem solving to misunderstandings of fundamentals or to gaps in mathematical knowledge. In this contribution, a previously proposed concept map aimed at ascribing a common approach to problem solving is further explored in a sequence of two junior-level chemical engineering courses. The difficulties of implementing a common problem-solving approach are discussed, and a hierarchy of problem solving is proposed – based on a combination of learning theories – to structure a problem-solving methodology from junior to senior level as well as toward graduate studies and professional practice. Preliminary results indicate that students benefiting from this structured approach exhibit improved confidence in their problem-solving abilities.  The proposed concept map forms the basis of future stages of the project, including curriculum and teaching innovations.


Author(s):  
Louise Meunier ◽  
Nicolas Hudon

Junior-level chemical engineering students often struggle with solving problems in fundamental undergraduate courses. This deficiency is generally attributed, by instructors and students alike, to gaps in mathematical knowledge. However, the difficulty may instead be rooted in an inability to interpret the information from problem statements. In this contribution, a coordinated, multi-faceted instruction methodology is proposed, over a sequence of second-year chemical engineering fundamental courses, to foster the development of problem-solving strategies and to increase the confidence of students in their abilities to decipher problem data, to develop a proper mathematical framework, and to apply a first-principle approach to problem solving. Compared with traditional lectures alone, obstacles to problem solving may be overcome when students are offered additional learning streams in the form of interactive workshops and video-recorded examples. This results in raised confidence levels toward translating problems into actionable solution procedure.


Author(s):  
Umar Iqbal ◽  
Deena Salem ◽  
David Strong

The objective of this paper is to document the experience of developing and implementing a second-year course in an engineering professional spine that was developed in a first-tier research university and relies on project-based core courses. The main objective of this spine is to develop the students’ cognitive and employability skills that will allow them to stand out from the crowd of other engineering graduates.The spine was developed and delivered for the first time in the academic year 2010-2011 for first-year general engineering students. In the year 2011-2012, those students joined different programs, and accordingly the second-year course was tailored to align with the different programs’ learning outcomes. This paper discusses the development and implementation of the course in the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department.


Mathematics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 662
Author(s):  
María Jesús Santos ◽  
Alejandro Medina ◽  
José Miguel Mateos Roco ◽  
Araceli Queiruga-Dios

Sophomore students from the Chemical Engineering undergraduate Degree at the University of Salamanca are involved in a Mathematics course during the third semester and in an Engineering Thermodynamics course during the fourth one. When they participate in the latter they are already familiar with mathematical software and mathematical concepts about numerical methods, including non-linear equations, interpolation or differential equations. We have focused this study on the way engineering students learn Mathematics and Engineering Thermodynamics. As students use to learn each matter separately and do not associate Mathematics and Physics, they separate each matter into different and independent compartments. We have proposed an experience to increase the interrelationship between different subjects, to promote transversal skills, and to make the subjects closer to real work. The satisfactory results of the experience are exposed in this work. Moreover, we have analyzed the results obtained in both courses during the academic year 2018–2019. We found that there is a relation between both courses and student’s final marks do not depend on the course.


2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fei Yu ◽  
Jan Sullivan ◽  
Leith Woodall

Objective - This project sought to identify students’ strengths and weaknesses in locating, retrieving, and citing information in order to deliver information skills workshops more effectively. Methods - Bibliographies submitted from first-year engineering and second- and fourth-year chemical engineering students’ project reports were analysed for the number of items cited, the variety of items cited, and the correct use of citation style. The topics of the project reports were also reviewed to see the relationships between the topics and the items cited. Results - The results show that upper level students cited more items in total than did lower level students in their bibliographies. Second- and fourth-year engineering students cited more books and journal articles than first-year students cited. Web sites were used extensively by all three groups of students, and for some first-year students these were the most frequently used sources. Students from all three groups had difficulties with citation style. Conclusion - There was a clear difference in citation frequency between upper and lower level engineering students. Different strategies of information skills instruction are needed for different levels of students. Librarians and department faculty members need to include good quality Internet resources in their teaching and to change the emphasis from finding information to finding, interpreting, and citing accurately.


2016 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter Coppens ◽  
Johan Van den Bossche ◽  
Mieke De Cock

In a series of interviews with second year electronics engineering students, several of them showed problems with signal properties. In a questionnaire administered to over 150 students in Belgium, these problems were further explored to verify how widespread they are. The questions asked about different aspects of signals. Students showed that they understand the concept of a phase shift, although they have problems with the direction. However, they generally have no idea what a signal with two frequencies looks like in the time domain. Bode plots also proved to be a problem for students, who are not able to construct one from a set of (dummy) measurements. Most of these issues persist after lab instruction.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sulma Guadalupe Gomez Jimenez ◽  
Angelica Del Carmen Lizardo Perez ◽  
Alva Del Rocio Pulido Tellez ◽  
Robeto Rodriguez Bastarmerito

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