Forty years' experience in teaching fluid mechanics at Strasbourg University

Abstract

A summary of the personal investment in teaching fluid mechanics over 40 years in a French university is presented. Learning and Teaching Science and Engineering has never been easy, and in recent years it has become a crucial challenge for curriculum developers and teaching staff to offer attractive courses and optimized assessments. One objective is to ensure that students acquire competitive skills in higher science education that enable them to compete in the employment market, as the mechanical field is a privileged sector in industry. During the last decade, classical learning and teaching methods have been coupled with hands-on practice for future schoolteachers in a specific course on subjects including fluid mechanics. The hands-on/minds-on/hearts-on approach has demonstrated its effectiveness in training primary school teachers, and fluids are certainly a nice source of motivation for pupils in science learning. In mechanical engineering, for undergraduate and graduate students, the development of teaching material and the learning and teaching experience covers up to 40 years, mostly on fluid dynamics and related topics. Two periods are identified, those prior to and after the Bologna Process. Most recently, teaching instruction has focused on the Fluid Mechanics Concept Inventory (FMCI). This inventory has been recently introduced in France, with some modifications, and remedial tools have been developed and are proposed to students to remove misconceptions and misunderstandings of key concepts in fluid mechanics. The FMCI has yet to be tested in French higher education institutions, as are the innovative teaching methods that are emerging in fluid mechanics.