in the First Year of Engineering
Matthew Ohland and
Elizabeth Stephan
Department of General Engineering
Forming a learning community requires not only that students work in groups, but also that the students give and receive help outside their group — that groups themselves collaborate. In traditional classrooms, the instructor is the focus and the instructor’s motion is restricted by the need to avoid obscuring the projection screen or blackboard. Movable seats, available in some classrooms, improve the opportunity for student-student interaction, but are generally packed too close together to allow the instructor access to individual students.
The SCALE-UP-style classroom built in Holtzendorff 200 (see sketch below), creates a dramatically different classroom environment.
Each 6-foot diameter table seats 8-9 students and has connections for laptop power and wired networking. The instructor is no longer at the front of the classroom — the classroom has no real “front” at all. Movable seating allows students to adjust the layout of their workspace and each student group is accessible to the instructor. Two projection screens at the left and right ends are visible from any seat in the room. Each group of four students in the room has a collaborative workspace in the form of two whiteboards mounted at each table. We have developed a one-page guide to designing classrooms, particularly where technology is needed.
Our approach generally involves a short lecture followed by in-class activities that require students to complete a graded assignment. These activities reinforce classroom attendance (important at the freshman level) and provide students with a goal to achieve in each class. When student questions reveal that many students are struggling with the same point, the instructor will sometimes choose to briefly return to lecture mode.
The collaborative activities used in this classroom change throughout the semester, including computer-based laboratories that have been developed at Clemson through the $460,000 National Science Foundation grant, “Clemson’s Experimental Engineering in Real-Time (EXPERT) Program,” which focuses on the pedagogical value of using real-time sensors in the first-year engineering classroom. The SCALE-UP environment has been particularly useful in teaching students to use computer tools including Excel and Matlab. Having students work on their own laptop ensures that each student is engaged in the learning process, but the collaborative environment ensures that students are never stuck for long without help. Two Undergraduate Teaching Assistants attend every class to help the instructor provide classroom coverage to facilitate instruction and to hold evening hours in pairs.
We made some classroom adjustments based on our early experience. Groups of four or more can work together to plan strategy at the whiteboards, and all the students sitting at a particular table can enter into discussions about difficult concepts. However, we have found that seating at the six-foot diameter round tables makes it difficult for more than three students to have detailed discussions. Particularly if students need to share work on a laptop, groups larger than three will inevitably exclude at least one student from full participation. Automating data collection makes many laboratory exercises move at a quicker pace. We found that this could encourage students to rush through the laboratory without reflecting, so we added reflective exercises to focus on learning. Further, the automation of data collection sometimes rendered some members of a four-person lab group unnecessary, so we had to reduce the size of the lab group to make sure that all students were engaged.
We have found that using the SCALE-UP approach helps ensure that all students are engaged in the learning process, which has many positive results. A multidisciplinary team of faculty is finalizing negotiations with the National Science Foundation regarding the proposal, “Adapting and Implementing the SCALE-UP Approach in Statics, Dynamics, and Multivariate Calculus.” Sherrill Biggers (Mechanical Engineering), Bill Moss (Mathematical Sciences), Matt Ohland (General Engineering), and Scott Schiff (Civil Engineering) will use the $180,000 award to deliver more effective Statics and Dynamics instruction to Clemson students using SCALE-UP pedagogies. Faculty development is an important part of our work, and we will be sure to share with the Clemson community what we develop and what we learn. Watch for workshops on this in the future.
