“Making Statics Dynamic!” Combining Lecture And Laboratory Into An Interdisciplinary, Problem Based, Active Learning Environment.

Abstract

The new U.A. Whitaker School of Engineering at Florida Gulf Coast University has been launched as a truly multidisciplinary engineering education endeavor with simultaneous development of three B.S. degree programs in bioengineering, environmental engineering and civil engineering. This interdisciplinary engineering curriculum includes eight common courses, one each semester, that all engineering majors will take. The third course in the sequence is a combined, four credit course of statics and dynamics, named Engineering Mechanics, taught in a combined lecture-lab format. This unique format provides five contact hours weekly, 2½ hours twice a week, for a total of 70 contact hours a semester. The extended meeting periods lend themselves particularly well to the lecture-lab format. There is time during each meeting period to allow students to "discover" engineering concepts in small groups using simple, and often, inexpensive physical models and measurement equipment. During each 2½ hour class at least one small group, hands-on activity is conducted. These activities include aspects of active and cooperative learning for learning problem solving techniques, with instruction and guidance from the instructor during the learning process. These activities are inexpensive and can be incorporated into a classroom of any size. Since this course is one of the eight interdisciplinary courses in the curriculum, efforts have been made to reduce the often heavy emphasis of civil and mechanical engineering in both the textbook and the typical class. Of the four authors, two are bioengineers who will be joining the faculty over the next year and co-teach this course. They have provided advice, assistance and sample problems focused in the biomedical area. These problems have been incorporated into class exercises, homework and exams. Student exam scores will be compared to similar exams from students in past years to assess whether this method improves student learning. Students will take a mini Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) Exam in statics to assess their ability to solve statics problems. A future collaboration is planned with another university to have their students take the same exam so a comparison of the two teaching methods can be made. This paper and presentation will focus on providing examples of many of the in-class activities created and tested during the first offering of this course in the fall of 2006. Lists of needed equipment and supplies will be provided. Students showed a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and excitement for the hands-on activities. They commented on how it was so much easier to see and understand the problems.

Impact of Full-Scale Models on Students’ Creativity in Basic Design Course

“…There are also several studies that poll students' feedback on the effectiveness of the implementation of the models, whose results indicated positive interactions with these strategies (Helbling & Traub, 2008;O'Neill et al, 2007;Schmucker, 1998).…”

Blended Statics: Finding an Effective Mix of Traditional and Flipped Classrooms in an Engineering Mechanics Course

“…The applicability of active learning in statics courses is the main concern in this paper. A variety of experimental and hands-on activities have been implemented in various statics courses [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. In addition, online and computer simulations can be easily implemented in classroom settings [24][25][26][27][28][29].…”

A Sequence of Laboratories for Beginning Statics Classes

“…However, additional equipment for engineering statics labs can be sizeable, such as structure walls, or expensive, such as structure walls and the Pasco bridge set. Also, the engineering statics instructors found little information on labs for engineering statics, with one notable exception [4]. The O'Neill et al [4] work used the Introductory Mechanics System by PASCO Scientific.…”

“…Also, the engineering statics instructors found little information on labs for engineering statics, with one notable exception [4]. The O'Neill et al [4] work used the Introductory Mechanics System by PASCO Scientific. Still, after searching for this system, our statics instructors found Pasco no longer sells this item.…”

“…Due to this unavailability, instructors created a purchase list (Tabulated in the Appendix) costing approximately $350 per set. O'Neill et al [4] cited a $700 per set -about double the cost of purchasing items a la carte. Either alternative is reasonable but much less costly, space-saving, and simpler than the Pasco bridge set, structure walls, etc.…”