REAL LIFE -- Project Overview

Overview

There is a critical need for engineering education at reform at Oklahoma State University (OSU) due to an unacceptably low retention of students, particularly women and under-represented minorities, in the engineering program. Low retention is due, in part, to a predominately lecture-based curriculum focusing on engineering fundamentals. Classes do not incorporate emerging knowledge, especially in cross-disciplinary areas which fall outside the traditional boundaries of engineering. The thesis of this project is that the root cause of low retention is that students do not perceive engineering courses as relevant to their lives. Successful models for engineering education reform exist, but have proven difficult to implement widely due to faculty perception of the effort required (lack of faculty buy-in), and the cost and effort of implementation (lack of administration support). Reform efforts are further complicated by the uncertainty of the long-term role of universities with advances in information technology.

The long-term goal of this project is developing a model for sustainable curriculum reform resulting in increased retention. During this one year planning phase the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering will implement a model curriculum designed to enhance relevancy, assess changes in student learning and attitudes following implementation, and use assessment data to plan future reform efforts. Implementation will be aided by faculty from the OSU College of Education, the OSU Library, and the School of Industrial Engineering and Management. The curriculum model to be implemented is named REAL LIFE (Relevancy Enhancement Achieved by Laboratories and Lecture Integrated For Engineering Education), and is based on proven engineering curriculum reform efforts. REAL LIFE integrates three proven teaching methods: case studies, team learning, and problem based learning. The proposed model addresses many of the concerns also facing engineering programs who wish to be accredited under the new ABET system.

The structure of REAL LIFE courses are shown below.

Flow chart of proposed REAL LIFE courses. See d-link for more information d

Case studies incorporate emerging knowledge, ethical, social, and personal issues. The case study includes simple, introductory concepts with extensive citations to further information which will be given as assignments later

Team Learning Reading/interactive assignments on a specific concept are assigned for each class period from text, web, or other resources. Prior to the class the instructor posts a set of example problems covering the assignment on the course web site, and prepares a multiple choice quiz whose questions follow closely the example problems. The example problems are formative, guiding students to important concepts and letting them test their understanding of these concepts. The problems are written in the context of the case study to highlight their relevance to the in-depth project. Before class, students may submit any questions on the reading assignment or problems via a web-based discussion group. "Extra credit" is earned by any student who can correctly respond to questions before class. Using a web based instrument for questions permits sufficient time for the instructor to prepare responses. At the start of the class period the instructor first answers any questions which have been submitted to the web-based discussion group. Next an in-class quiz is given to students to complete individually, collected, and graded. The same quiz is then given to each team; students interact, arguing points and correcting mistakes made on the individual quizzes. The group exam serves as formative evaluation. Group quizzes are immediately graded and results returned to the teams. Teams who disagree with one or more answers are able prepare a written appeal which must contain evidence to support their viewpoint. Finally the instructor clarifies any concepts which were not well understood by a majority of students.

Design and Construction of a project permits students to test the validity of their conceptual understanding. To ensure that students undergo more than "trial and error" design, submission of a design proposal with modeling is required before construction of the project is begun. Experimental design work is by nature a complex problem that adds the key element of relevance and also serves to reinforce the value of cross-disciplinary knowledge; project completion requires skills outside those specifically addressed in team learning. The project construction is also key to affective learning since students must develop effective teamwork skills to complete projects successfully.

Evaluation The first evaluation is both formative and summative. In team learning, peer evaluation using a standardized report card is used to determine the relative percentage of the total grade each team member receives. Though individual evaluations are anonymous, students are informed how their efforts are perceived by the group. The second evaluation metric is a Student Assessment of Learning Gains (SALG) to evaluate students' perceptions of what gains they have made during the course of the focus area as well which elements were most effective.

This method has been previously implemented and tested at OSU in the LASER CULT (Light Applications for Science and Engineering Research Collaborative Laboratory for Teaching) through a National Science Foundation Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement award.

Last modified: 27 November 2002
URL: http://www.library.okstate.edu/reallife/overview.shtm
Contact: Beth Reiten