Jigsaws & Parleys: Strategies for engaging sophomore level students as a learning community

Abstract

Early chemical engineering coursework provides an important foundation in topics such as energy and material balances. A common pedagogical approach to these topics includes providing engineering analysis problems with basic context and a single correct answer. While this approach can help students develop mastery of content, it does not help students develop an understanding of authentic engineering practices, especially design problem framing and solving. Without this aspect, we risk losing students from underrepresented groups in engineering as they are less likely to have engineering relatives and friends who can help them see the real-world relevance of what they are doing in their early coursework. We describe how we threaded a community-based, entrepreneurial design challenge focused on algal biofuel production through a core chemical engineering course. Participants included students (N=61) enrolled in a sophomore-level Chemical Process Calculations course at a large minority-serving research university in the American Southwest. Students worked in pairs on homework assignments to support peer learning. We replaced one question from each of the six homework assignments with design challenge deliverables. Students worked in subteams on one of the three algal production phases (i.e., growth, harvest, extraction). They also developed individual accountability through jigsaw sessions in which they explained their subteam's work to students from other production phases. They built whole-class consensus through "parley" sessions that involved decision matrices. We describe the design challenge and our study, in which we investigated how a design challenge threaded through a sophomore course might provide students with a picture of authentic engineering design practices and content. More specifically, we wondered about students' perceptions of the jigsaw session, and to what extent the three different topics (algal growth, algal harvesting, and biofuel extraction) led students to learn substantially different information. We developed coding schemes to analyze student work in the parley and jigsaw sessions. We found that the parley sessions provided opportunities for students to learn from one another. They argued from evidence and backed their ideas with research citations, sometimes leading their peers to amend their initial design decision. Even though they were assigned to a particular production phase, they investigated aspects of the other phases. We observed high student engagement throughout the design challenge.