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An educational experiment at Worcester Polytechnic Institute is described in which the instruction of the Introduction to MaterialsScience course (ES2001) was modified to incorporate active and cooperative learning. The overall goal was simultaneously to enhance educational quality and faculty productivity. Aspects of the course modification included use of "active" rather than traditional lectures, assignment of students to cooperative learning teams, introduction of a "product dissection project," and a "teacher as manager" approach to instruction, in which undergraduate Peer Learning Assistants and the graduate Teaching Assistant took on responsibilities as part of the instructional team. Data were gathered from 382 students in three traditional course offerings and two active/cooperative offerings, using various survey instruments to measure students' learning and performance, attitudes about learning, interest in materials science, and their satisfaction with the course. natural tendency to be spectators and fortified any pre-existing "teach me" attitudes rather than cultivating intellectual curiosity and self-led learning. Indeed, research has shown that the exclusive use of lecturing in the classroom constrains students' learning. 3 Another important driving force for the course modification was our conviction, shared by employers' of new engineering graduates and others, 6,7 that developing students' "softer" skills-their communication and interpersonal skills, desire to learn, and confidence in their ability to do so-is as important as ensuring their technical competence. Furthermore, we believe that attention to communication and teamwork skills can and should be considered in the context of every engineering course to avoid "compartmentalization of knowledge." 8 An additional consideration in the redesign of ES2001 was course staffing as it affects faculty productivity. In recent years, lectures have been supplemented by weekly recitation section meetings to create opportunities for group discussion that were lost due to larger class sizes. These weekly problem solving and question-andanswer sessions are typically staffed by four materials science and engineering (MTE) faculty members, some of whom spend not insignificant time preparing for these section meetings. Our feeling was that faculty productivity, as well as student learning, potentially could be enhanced by utilizing undergraduate and graduate students as part of the instructional team in lieu of the faculty recitation instructors. Furthermore, this "teacher as manager" approach could improve the productivity of the primary faculty instructor.The objectives and desired outcomes for the modified instructional format of ES2001 are summarized in Table 1. In this paper we report details of how the course was redesigned to meet these objectives, along with results of our comparative assessment of students' experiences in the two course formats.