(225h) The Startup Method to Managing Large Classes – a Technique Inspired By Asee Summer School 2017 | AIChE

(225h) The Startup Method to Managing Large Classes – a Technique Inspired By Asee Summer School 2017

Authors 

Reuel, N. - Presenter, Iowa State University
Managing an engineering course in the 50 to 100 student size can be difficult as students still expect a high level of one on one interaction with professors. To meet this expectation, I recently implemented a new classroom management practice for a 70 student section of Chemical Engineering Numerical Methods that blended elements learned from ASEE Summer School in 2017. Prior to starting class, the students are surveyed to determine their post baccalaureate plans and were grouped into ten startup teams according to their career or research interests (advanced materials, agriculture, consumer products, downstream petroleum, energy, food technology, law and business, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and upstream petroleum). Slack was used as our team messaging and collaboration software, were each startup had a private channel and the class had a public channel. On the first day each student uploaded a picture and content to their slack profile. This tool proved to be invaluable to manage the amount of messaging (>4700 peer to peer and peer to instructor posts through the semester), file sharing, and memorizing student names. Examples will be shown of peer to peer instruction that occurred using this platform. Startup teams sat together in class, worked on class problems, submitted group problem as part of their weekly problem sets, and developed an independent term project that demonstrated numerical methods on real world data. Examples of these term projects will be shared as part of this talk. The outcome of this new course management was overwhelmingly positive. Many more students were engaged than in previous sections and retention of core concepts seems to have improved.

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