Cooperative learning environments for engineering courses

Abstract

Undergraduate students have a strong desire to participate in hands-on 'real-world' projects. Moreover, undergraduate students included in the author's research in optics and materials showed much excitement and interest in these research areas. The success of these undergraduate projects encouraged the author to convert two of the photonics courses at the State University of New York at Buffalo (UB) to have a similar environment to that of research. Specifically, a cost effective (only requires changing teaching style) collaborative active-learning environment to stimulate student interest was implemented. This learning environment incorporates the recently developed pedagogical techniques that have resulted from the engineering and science curriculum reform being pursued throughout the country: cooperative learning, experience-based hands-on learning, and the application of information technologies. Moreover, these techniques are especially well suited for engineers entering industry since they emphasize group efforts, active learning, and gender and race friendly learning styles. Here, the results of the first semester of using a collaborative active-learning environment in a senior level course and the plan for using this technique in a sophomore level computer programming course (with a larger numbers of students and two different sections for better assessment) will be presented.