(225d) Improvements in Teaching Core Undergraduate Courses after Chemical Engineering Summer School 2017

After attending Chemical Engineering Summer School in 2017, I made some significant improvements in my Fluid Mechanics course at The University of Utah. Around 90 students were enrolled in Fall 2017. This was my second time teaching this course; the first time was in Fall 2016. My course evaluations for 2017 versus 2016 in Fluid Mechanics were significantly improved, largely due to modifications made through ideas obtained at the Summer School. One of the major additions to the Fluid Mechanics course was to add a video project, where the students were tasked with producing a short video to explain a fluid mechanics topic to a general audience. The students were exposed to similar videos throughout the course on “YouTube Fridays” in order for them gain ideas for how to structure the videos. The videos were of overall very good quality and clips of these videos will be presented. Other changes to the course will be presented which include an emphasis on daily class objectives and examination study guides.

Additionally, in Spring 2018, I began teaching the undergraduate Chemical Reaction Engineering course. This course was switched from a 50 minute course three times per week to an 80 minute course twice per week. This gave me more flexibility to try some new teaching methods. Ideas from the Summer School such as incorporating active learning were employed in this course and examples of active learning activities that were used will be presented.