Creating a Baseline for Lifelong Learning in Engineering Education
Session Chairs:
- Anna Wolna, Chemstations Europe
Session Description:
What are the most important skills engineering graduates need in their future careers? What they should learn today to be prepared for a world supported by intelligent systems that may exceed human intelligence?
Young professionals need to be prepared for a lifetime of continuous development and advancement, by not only applying the knowledge they obtained during engineering course but also by acquiring new knowledge when needed.
The session is dedicated to innovation and lifelong learning as major drivers behind an ever-changing demand for professional skills.
*All session and speaker information is subject to change pending finalization.
Confirmed Speakers:
- Jeffrey Halpern, University of New Hampshire
- Juergen Rarey, University of Oldenburg
Abstracts:
Integrating Global Simulation Competition into Senior Design
Jeffrey M. Halpern, University of New Hampshire
Process Simulation Cup (PSC) is an international process simulation competition associated with Chemistations ChemCAD software. As part of this competition, a control system needs to be optimized for an already designed process. Typically, the simulation system, can be optimized through trial and error without regard of design of experiments, safety, or real-world implications. As part of the learning objectives in Senior Process Design, the students were asked to engage the limitations and implications of their answers. As such, safety statements were expanded on beyond the answer given in the international competition. The final requested written response engaged an integration of process control, safety, economics, and process design.
A friendly, game oriented, competition got the students involved and excited. Yet, many students failed the learning objectives, and failed to identify implications of their answer in a safety paradigm. In other words, many students pushed the limits of the process design, yet minor fluctuations, as one would expect on a process line, would overload the system. Few students reported these potential fluctuations, and therefore, did not understand the full repercussions of their answer.
Reported in this presentation will be typical student answers, grading sheets, learning objectives, and how the problem has been integrated into my course.