(154b) A Student-Created, Open Access, Living Textbook
AIChE Annual Meeting
2017
2017 Annual Meeting
Education Division
Jumpstart Your Teaching!: Small Teaching Ideas for Course Improvement
Monday, October 30, 2017 - 12:48pm to 1:06pm
We used wikis hosted at <openwetware.org> to allow students to create and update their own textbooks for two classes at the University of Massachusetts Amherst; Tissue Engineering (CHEM-ENG 575), and Microfluidics and Microscale Analysis in Materials and Biology (CHEM- ENG 590E). Each year, the instructor identifies a range of topics that require either the development of a new wiki page, or improvement from previous years. Students then have the flexibility to choose a topic related to their own interests, integrating the idea of a flipped classroom with student self-directed learning. Wiki page creation can then be coupled with other student-led activities such as lectures, discussions, or hands-on design projects. Student response to this approach has been extremely positive, citing reasons such as âwiki pages are better to understand and cheap (free),â that âinformation was compressed and easier,â that they found it âbetter to learn by contributing,â and that the âwiki is well-synthesized, with concise information and good jumping points.â Additionally, the integration of wikis into the classroom represents an excellent opportunity to cover many aspects of the current ABET accreditation criteria (a)-(k), many of which are more difficult to integrate into the core chemical engineering curriculum.
References:
- Course website for Tissue Engineering: http://openwetware.org/wiki/ChemEng_590B
- Course website for Microfluidics and Microscale Analysis in Materials and Biology: http://openwetware.org/wiki/CHEM-ENG590EÂ