Project Title:
Engineering Education for the Visual Learner: An Innovative Approach
Project Director and Other Associated Faculty and Staff:
James Wilde, Asst. Professor of Civil Engineering, Minnesota State University Mankato, Contact: j.wilde@mnsu.edu, Telephone: (507)389-5252
Kaen Chou, Associate Prof., Minnesota State University Mankato, Contact: Karen.chou@mnsu.edu, Tel.: (507)389-2062
Project Design:
In general, engineering students are more visual than verbal learners and so their courses should be changed to incorporate more visual and active learning tools to teach difficult engineering concepts. In the past, the project team has developed simple engineering models to use for classroom demonstration. In this project, the team would like to develop more advanced visual teaching aids and demonstrations. These teaching aids will be designed by the faculty and constructed by students in mechanical engineering. In addition, professional engineers from the community will be asked to comment on the effectiveness of the tools as teaching aids.
Project Evaluation and Outcomes:
During 2004-05 academic year, new teaching methods were developed in 5 engineering courses (representing all 4 major areas of the civil engineering program) using equipment that was made for this project. This equipment demonstrated concepts such as measuring materials, water runoff, beam bending, etc. In addition, the team recognized the need to emphasize professional ethics in engineering education by purchasing several videos that described ethical situations and required students to write essays analyzing ethical dilemmas. The faculty who have used the new techniques and demonstrations in their classes have received excellent feedback. In fact Dr. Wilde had a peer faculty consultation provided by MSU in his course during Spring 2005 and one of the predominant responses from the students to the peer reviewer was the use of visual tools.
Lessons Learned, Dissemination and Sustainability
The team plans to present the results of this project at engineering conferences and Drs. Wilde and Budge have submitted abstracts to the 2005 Midwest Regional Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education and both of their abstracts have been accepted. Members of the team also are willing to present at appropriate CTL conferences. By utilizing these visual learning aids, the project team expects that students will learn better and more efficiently. In the future, a good mix of lecture and visual learning tools will address the needs of a wide variety of students in our courses.
