Team Teaching: A Freshman Engineering Rhetoric & Laboratory

Team teaching usually involves the back-and-forth trading of lecturing between two instructors. The present example illustrates a looser sideby-s ide col laborat ion consist ing of a f i rs t year rhetor ic, based upon readings, poetry, and videos in technology, literature and history, and a “hands-on” laboratory centered around consumer electronics. The effect achieved is a bridging of the “two cultures” by viewing technology through alternating sets of glasses. I n t r o d u c t i o n Directors of university engineering curricula are besieged by ever noisier clamour for more and earlier “hands-on” experience, and for more exposure to, and practice in, reading and writing “across the curriculum” in course-centered formats. The freshman year is a logical target for new course innovation, except for the obvious problem that the f i rs t engineering year often has few, if any, elective spaces for new, widely available experiments in engineering education. Therefore, new first y e a r c o u r s e s a r e e x p e c t e d t o p a t t e r n themse lves a f te r ex is t ing requirements, in order to satisfy the argument of the type “please accept new course X in lieu of current Y“. A new example f rom our NCSU Co l lege o f Eng ineer ing is an integrated version of mathematics, physics, and chemistry, known as IMPEC and described in the preceding paper (l); here the challenge is largely curricular integration to give physics or chemistry a “just-intime” mathematics component, all spiced with design examples from ---{iiii’ ) 1996 ASEE Annual Conference Proceedings ‘.JRYR’: . P ge 135.1 engineering, a n d r e f o r m a t t e d t o p r e s c r i b e l e a r n i n g i n t e a m s . T h e curricular space availability is certain in this new six-unit course which neatly covers each semester the materials in the previous pair of threeunit courses (either physics or chemistry, plus mathematics). We describe here a second NCSU freshman engineering course, cast in a less fami l iar format, achieved through integrat ing a “hands-on” laboratory with a composition and discussion class based on readings about technology. A one semester freshman composition requirement is the replacement equivalent sought for this new venture, which is a joint effort between an engineering professor, David Ollis and a former NCSU English instructor and current Co-Director of our College of Engineering Writing Assistance Program, Ann Brown. First we review the motivations for such course integration, in -order to provide purposes far more convincing than a mere scheduling convenience. In later sections, we describe the course content, the fall ’95 pilot offering, and a brief student T h e I n t e l l e c t u a l C h a l l e n g e : Technology Many arguments can be made with history, art, and literature. rhetoric and laboratory integration, technical anthologies : and instructor In tegrat ing evaluation. H u m a n i t i e s and for combining science and technology Two motivations, pertinent to our are of fered by the edi tors of two In their World of Science: An Anthology for Writers (2), Gladys Lei thauser and Mari lynn Bel l argue that current technical educat ion shortchanges the student of f irsthand contact with the scientists and technology wr i ters they wish to become. Such direct contact these editors achieve through readings and writing from their anthology, which is based in science: One organizing principle of this collection is that s t u d e n t writers often do better work when their readings reflect their special interests. Yet anthologies of such readings are rare for students in the natural sciences.(2)