HANDS-ON EDUCATION WITHOUT THE HANDS-ON? AN APPROACH TO ONLINE DELIVERY OF A SENIOR LAB COURSE IN CHEMICAL ENGINEERING WHILE MAINTAINING KEY LEARNING OUTCOMES

Abstract

The senior chemical engineering lab course at UBC follows an open-ended problem-based lab (PBL) framework, which has been shown in previous work to improve self-reported learning outcomes in students. Given the hands-on experiential components of lab-based courses in general, their shift to remote delivery, such as the one required by the COVID-19 pandemic, is challenging. Shifting a PBL course to a virtual setting while maintaining its more open-ended learning outcomes is likely even more difficult. This paper outlines the design of an online senior PBL course in chemical and biological engineering, in which TAs, present in the lab, act as Operators and implement student-designed experimental plans over several weeks, while maintaining active virtual contact with their teams. Feedback from students on this experience, the particulars of the course design, and the perceived value of this approach, based on data collected from survey responses, is presented and compared to similar data collected for the latest in-person offering of the same course.