(158b) Reconnecting Chemical Engineering Students with the Physical World

Social and technological changes have affected the abilities of students in engineering to critically evaluate results obtained in problem solving exercises. Many students' physical experiences are no longer adequate to produce in them a sense of reality or a mechanism by which they might estimate probable outcome. Jeffrey Zaslow (Wall Street Journal, October 6, 2005) notes that the technology-focused lifestyle of today's children can ?leave them disconnected from the wider world,? and ?oblivious to adult culture.? Furthermore, electronic technology has led to pervasive multi-tasking among adolescents, making conventional classroom instruction less effective than it was decades ago. Under these conditions, engineering education can result in a veneer of technical sophistication coupled with a complete lack of physical understanding. We have been working on several field exercises designed to address this problem by providing experiential learning with a rich, somatic component. We have chosen scenarios familiar to every engineering student, emphasizing integration of multiple subjects with a clear connection between new information and prior knowledge. We consider obvious, practical application(s) to be crucial. Our experiences with this approach are described in this paper.