(538c) Undergraduate Academic Credit through on-Site Industrial Experiences: a Problem or an Opportunity?

WPI's project-based curriculum requires all students to complete a major research or design project during their senior year. That project requires a faculty advisor in the major discipline and involves a minimum of nine credit hours of work. In chemical engineering the project is separate from our capstone design requirement. Until recently, most of these projects occurred on-campus in faculty research labs or at local companies. In the last few years more students are leaving campus to do the projects at remote industrial sites. Some of the sites are domestic while others are outside the US. Our local senior year projects are probably similar to the ?senior thesis? or other upper-level undergraduate research structures at most universities. However, the off-campus projects are distinctly different and although they must satisfy similar learning outcomes as on-campus projects, they present different educational and other challenges.

In a typical year, a third to one-half of the graduating class takes advantage of these opportunities. Students travel to the site, reside in local housing, and work full time, in teams, for the sponsor on open-ended chemical engineering problems. This is not the traditional internship or co-op model. The educational model is blend of project and problem-based learning.

The student team experience is designed and monitored using well-established cooperative learning principles adapted to our academic structure. Instructional design is based on situated learning theory and the principles of guided participation. Students are not paid while on-site but receive chemical engineering academic credit. Several pedagogical and non-academic components are necessary for program success. These include authentic learning environments, authentic student assessments, knowledge integration within the problem context, and commitment to managing non-academic aspects.

Placing undergraduates in real industrial environments while they simultaneously earn academic credit allows for unique learning opportunities, but also presents some unique challenges. Our presentation will include desired learning outcomes and their connection to several ABET criteria, a program description, and examples of recent projects done at sites in California, Cleveland, and Nancy, France. We will concentrate on the educational design that establishes appropriate chemical engineering problems, requires close collaboration between WPI faculty and on-site liaisons, and provides optimal monitoring and evaluation of student progress. We will also discuss challenges such as insuring depth and meeting program goals while advising over distance and time, dealing with student team dynamics issues, and potential conflicts between WPI learning outcomes and industrial sponsor goals. Sometimes these issues revolve around fundamental differences between process engineering projects and research-focused projects. We will explore that tension and how it is shaped by educational goals and student advising.

A meaningful and deep learning experience requires sound pedagogy that is based upon adapting well-known principles of good classroom teaching to a project-based environment. However, a good learning experience also needs an appropriate level of non-academic support and structure. Those elements are present on each university's campus but are not easily accessible to students working away from campus. We combine sound risk management and health and safety practices, with faculty/student training and the experience of running engineering education's largest international program to accomplish an appropriate level of non-academic support.

We will present our multidimensional assessment process. The primary assessment is at the student level since, as a degree requirement, students must receive a grade. Secondary assessment comes from industrial liaisons and program-level evaluations. Results from authentic assessments provide direct evidence for several ABET outcomes. Direct evidence (actual student performance) is preferred over indirect (results of surveys or other self-assessments). And, this type of evidence avoids the problems associated with using course grades as an outcome measure.

We hope that lessons learned from recent experiences will be valuable to other chemical engineering educators looking to implement more non-course centered learning opportunities.