Engineering Elective Course Re-design to Promote Student Engagement

Gordon D. Stubley
2015 Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA)  
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for Engineering Design, is a 4th year mechanical engineering elective course. The course goal is for course graduates to be able to effectively use computer simulation tools to select optimal engineering designs based on the analysis of fluid flow performance. After being well received for many years, over several course offerings the class attendance, the student engagement in lectures, the student demonstration of key course concepts in the final summative
more » ... oject, and the student course evaluation scores all dropped.From student feedback to specific questions during the student course evaluation it was found that the students believed that their existing understanding of engineering fluid mechanics was sufficient to make well-informed design decisions and that the emphasized course concepts were not relevant to the engineering design process. This feedback informed a course re-design.After briefly describing the course context and objectives and the motivation theory that guided this course re-design, the two major features of the course re-design, pre/post-test activities and authentic engineering assignments, are described in some detail. Finally the impact of the re-design on student performance and outcomes from three offerings of the re-designed course is presented.
doi:10.24908/pceea.v0i0.5776 fatcat:yzi7nkrkavdztgcrf2v2gbxrja