Bringing Active Learning Into The Traditional Classroom: Teaching Process Control The Right Way

Abstract

Since joining the faculty of Chemical Engineering at the University of Colorado in 1975, I have taught the undergraduate course in process control 20 times. The course has always had a laboratory component, and, since 1994, this has been a full-featured 15-session laboratory. The classroom portion of the course was taught in a traditional lecture format until the Spring 1996 semester. In the past, the course has been well received by students and, generally, has been complimented by alumni, faculty peers, and practitioners. Still, the persistent difficulty experienced by students over the years in attempting to grasp the more challenging concepts of process control led me to try a different mode of instruction in 1996. In the Spring semester of 1996, I converted the classroom component of the course to an activelearning format. This was facilitated by being able to teach the course in the Bechtel Active Learning Center of the Integrated Teaching & Learning Laboratory (ITLL), a new instructional facility in the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Colorado. In lieu of traditional lecture, I wrote over 40 active-learning workshops. Students are organized in groups at small conference tables. My instruction primarily consists of wandering the room, answering questions posed by the groups, and coaching. Only occasionally do I speak to the class as a whole. Conversion of the course has provided two important benefits: students were extremely positive about the learning environment and students grasped important, difficult concepts better than they had in previous years in the traditional lecture format. From my perspective, it is also important to note that, after all, it is possible to teach an old dog new tricks.