Non Traditional Courses For Applying Stem Knowledge

Timothy Raymond
2007 Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings   unpublished
Tim received his BS in Chemical Engineering from Bucknell University in 1997 and his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University in 2002. He has taught a variety of courses since starting at Bucknell in 2002. He is interested in improving student learning by directing students to discover their own misconceptions and to learn new material by teaching and 'doing'. Abstract Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) courses traditionally teach fundamental concepts but seldom allow students to
more » ... y apply that knowledge. Ideally, students should have ample opportunities to apply previous course content to new courses, areas, and problems. The purpose of this paper is to describe two elective courses designed for science and engineering majors in their junior or senior year of a STEM program. The first course described, Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics, has been successfully implemented for four semesters while being continuously revised. The second course is in the design stage and will be ready for implementation in the next academic year. For both courses, the approach has been to create a technical course that combines content from math, physics, chemistry, and introductory engineering courses and presents the content in a variety of ways utilizing several pedagogical 'best practices'. New course content for the subject area is introduced by way of applying previously learned material to novel problems outside of traditional courses. Assessments indicate that this approach has been successful in meeting its objectives.
doi:10.18260/1-2--1716 fatcat:ogkm6dhlpbb3rn6pl56rgashha