(565a) Core Chemical Engineering Graduate Bridging Course: Development and Early Evaluation

This work discusses the development of an online chemical engineering bridging course, followed by an early evaluation of the first offered semester in Fall 2018. The two-semester online course covers main chemical engineering topics including material and energy balances, thermodynamics, transport, and reactor design. The primary objective of the course is to prepare students with backgrounds in chemistry, biology and other non-chemical engineering fields for graduate study in chemical engineering. Engineers and scientists from industry who want comprehension of core concepts of chemical engineering and are looking for a continuing education option will also benefit from this course. The delivery of the course incorporates short course modules utilizing multimedia features (e.g. text and short videos) along with modern pedagogical and assessment technologies (e.g. screencasts, light board recordings, and conceptual quizzes with instant automated feedback). Individual live recorded chatrooms are linked to each topic in the course which allow students and the instructor to collaborate in real time and discuss the course material in more depth.

Preliminary background and development details for this course were presented as a Work-in-Progress at the 2018 ASEE annual meeting in Salt Lake City, UT, and feedback and suggestions from the ChE education community were incorporated to the first course offering. Students’ ability to achieve the specified course leaning objectives and their overall satisfaction with the teaching methods are considered very important measures to determine course success. Early data-driven analysis and evaluation of the course will be presented. The data collected include mid-term course evaluations, student surveys, academic records, and students’ grades on homework and exams. The collected data are categorized based on demographics, course experience and engagement, academic performance, learning perceptions, and motivation. The evaluation is also focused on course structure, student experience, and content for future improvement.