Teaching Material And Energy Balances To First Year Students Using Cooperative Team Based Projects And Labs

A team-based cooperative learning environment for teaching Principles of Chemical Engineering (the material and energy balances course) has been used at Bucknell University for several years. This course has been carefully designed to include a variety of "best practices" to help prepare chemical engineering students in their first course in the curriculum. The course involves five two-week projects where students work in teams to complete problems covering a range of materials and, at the same time, practice teamwork and professional skills. Additionally, each project involves a complex laboratory experiment and use of process simulation software (HYSYS) problems. This work is carefully guided by the course instructors in a way to promote independent learning while assessing the desired outcomes. Assessment for this course has been ongoing and involves a range of data from team self-reports, before and after project concept inventories, individual surveys, team surveys, and final course evaluations. This paper will explain the details of the course setup, the unique application and evaluation of various "best practices" used in the course, and assessment/evaluation of the benefits of the cooperative learning environment.