Techniques used to promote active learning in an undergraduate architectural acoustics course

Abstract

The five-year undergraduate architectural engineering (AE) program at Penn State requires all students to take an introductory course in architectural acoustics (AA) and for most students in the program, no further AA courses are required. As a result, it is very important to capture the students’ interest early on in the course and use strategies that will improve long-term retention of the material. A number of techniques were used to improve student engagement with the introductory AA course that had an enrollment of 94 students. The first homework assignment was to summarize a recent magazine article in any area of acoustics, which allowed the students to immediately see a real-world application of the subject. During lecture periods, students were encouraged to participate through the use of personal response devices, also known as “clickers.” Several different types of clicker questions were used, including review questions from the preceding lecture, questions to prompt participation during the presentation of example problems, and conceptual questions. The results from the multiple choice clicker questions are immediately displayed, which provides useful feedback to both the students and the instructor. Some hands-on activities during the practicum periods were also incorporated to reinforce the content from the lectures.