This paper was presented at the 2008 Engineering Conference - Innovation Good Practice and Research in Engineering Education.
In a first year chemical engineering undergraduate course the primary learning objectives are: to develop the students’ knowledge and understanding of basic chemical process principles called material balances; and develop their problem solving skills. A Problem Based Learning (PBL) approach was introduced in 2005/06. Through the changes in the course we were able to expose the students to the way process engineers work think and communicate their ideas as well as introducing them to the processing/chemicals industry. This represents what SavinBaden (2000) refers to as “Model I” type PBL with the expectation that students become competent in applying knowledge in the context of problem solving and also learn how to manage their problem solving. The knowledge is fairly certain and the process of learning linear in nature.
Combining all aspects of the assessment only 2 students failed on the first attempt in 2006/2007 with student feedback being very positive. However some students found the group work stressful due to their weakness in core chemical engineering skills. A decision was made to support the development of these skills in the early part of the course through the use of online quizzes. These enable the students to selfassess their weaknesses and strengths in the core chemical engineering principles and enable them to independently practice these skills so that they come to the PBL group work much more prepared. This paper outlines the lessons learnt from providing both online and offline resources in this PBL approach.
