An Interactive Programming Course Model for Mechanical Engineering Students

Programming is a crucial skill for today’s engineering student. The majority of mechanical engineering programs in the US include an “introduction to programming” course taken during the first or second year. The primary goal of the course is to providing students with the basic programming techniques that are required to excel in specific mechanical engineering fields of study. Additionally, the course aims to develop a variety of skills that transcend all scientific disciplines, including problem solving, logical reasoning, debugging, and software training. A course in programming can be challenging for many students choosing to major in mechanical engineering. The major attracts students with diverse backgrounds and a wide variety of academic interests. It is uncommon for students to choose to study mechanical engineering because of their interest in programming or modeling. This often leads to a disconnect between the students and the instructor, which can create an intimidating classroom environment. The work presented here is driven by these findings. A new programming course has been developed to address the problems existing in the original course model, which include: (a) the course being offered outside of an engineering department, (b) the extreme variability in the rate at which the students comprehend the material, and (c) the frustration of new programmers, especially with debugging. Backward course design was used to redesign the course, addressing all of the existing problems. First, the new course focuses on engineering specific computational applications, is taught by a Mechanical Engineering professor, and uses a more practical programming language, MATLAB. Thus, the essentials of programming are introduced within a focused framework that cultivates the development of analytical tools commonly used in engineering disciplines, such as statistics, data analysis, numerical differentiation and integration, and Fourier analysis. Second, the Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) method is used so that students are self-guided through part of the instruction. Lastly, class time is organized in such a way that the instructor spends over half of the time working directly with individuals and small groups. This gives the students an opportunity to have explanations individually catered to their level of understanding, as well as plenty of time for peer and instructor assistance with debugging. The course initially ran under the new model in Spring, 2013. The course ran for 15 weeks and had 37 students split into two different sections. There were no teaching assistants. Feedback from the students indicated that they benefitted greatly from the course design. Improvements for the second iteration of the new course model, which will occur in Spring, 2014, include lengthening the course from 2.5 hours per week to 4 hours per week, utilizing more traditional lecture, incorporating class discussions, adding student created supplementary video content in the essence of classroom flipping, and integrating an overarching humanitarian theme to all assignments in an effort to support the liberal arts goals of the university.