Project-Based Curriculum for Renewable Energy Engineering Technology

This paper presents a novel approach of instruction for the Renewable Energy Engineering Technology program, emphasizing design and implementation techniques that complement traditional teaching methods. Course and laboratory development are discussed, and project selection and management is emphasized. This analysis was done to predict the effectiveness of project-based instruction for programs related to power generation, in general, and to renewable energy, in particular. Two different courses were examined and their course learning outcomes compared to the expected, statistically predicted outcome. Both courses were structured as lecture-lab-project, where the laboratory experiments were sufficient in number and complexity to consolidate the topics addressed during lectures, while the projects selected were intended to cover sufficient number of topics addressed through the first half of the course, as the topics covered in the second half of each course could have not be feasibly implemented, due to financial and time constraints. Throughout this work, extensive literature review on the topic of technical curriculum development was employed. This research shows that project oriented courses, when well timed with lecture and laboratory sessions, constitute an advanced teaching method as compared to traditional lecture-lab schemes. This approach has demonstrated its added value to courses in the Renewable Energy Engineering Technology concentration, where implementation of design is generally the trademark of Engineering Technology programs. Consequently, project reports and technical presentations, associated with each individual project, underline the set of skills characteristic to graduates of Engineering Technology programs. This research demonstrates the clear advantage of lecture-lab-project structured courses of Renewable Energy Engineering Technology as opposed to the more traditional method lecture-lab course structure.