Cooperative Learning Environments For Engineering Courses.

Undergraduate students have a strong desire to participate in hands-on “real-world” projects. Moreover, undergraduate students included in the author's research in optics and materials showed much excitement and interest in these research areas. The success of these undergraduate projects encouraged the author to convert two of the photonics courses at the State University of New York at Buffalo (UB) to have a similar environment to that of research. Specifically, a cost effective (only requires changing teaching style) collaborative active-learning environment to stimulate student interest was implemented. This learning environment incorporates the recently developed pedagogical techniques that have resulted from the engineering and science curriculum reform being pursued throughout the country: cooperative learning, experience-based hands-on learning, and the application of information technologies. Moreover, these techniques are especially well suited for engineers entering industry since they emphasize group efforts, active learning, and gender and race friendly learning styles. Here, the results of the first semester of using a collaborative active-learning environment in a senior level course and the plan for using this technique in a sophomore level computer programming course (with a larger numbers of students and two different sections for better assessment) will be presented. Introduction Student interest in the physics related courses in Electrical and Computer Engineering, like photonics, materials, and fabrication, continues to decline. In this work, the author will focus on deficiencies in educating photonic engineers. The loss of interest in these areas is mostly due to the demand, from industry, for computer engineers and sciences and the promise of high paying careers. However, the author feels that this decline is also due to the inability to involve the students in physics related courses in an exciting manner. It has been proposed (and implemented to some degree) to include multimedia technologies to enhance the student learning environment by providing virtual laboratories and lectures using computer technology. Although these technologies can potentially provide an enhanced learning environment, they are expensive to establish and maintain, and, therefore, are not readily available. In addition, as pointed out by Wallace and Mutooni , merely presenting the material using WEB based learning may not P ge 362.1 guarantee students will use it effectively. Therefore, the use of WEB based learning must be carefully planned before implementation. In addition, the physics related courses are, traditionally, taught as theory based lecture style courses. These courses are viewed as boring by the majority of the undergraduate students. In contrast, students in computer engineering can be successful and actively participating in their education from the very beginning, e.g., when learning to program they write a program and immediately see the results of their work. Furthermore, a parallel can be drawn between the current state of photonic engineering (including photonic materials, optics and lasers) and the early years of computer science (CS). In the early years, CS demanded primarily graduate degrees for beginning positions. However, after a few years of expansion, CS demanded mostly bachelor degrees for entry-level positions. As a similar high technology area, in its infancy, photonic engineering should undergo a similar maturation and soon be requiring mostly bachelor degrees. Unfortunately, the current training level of undergraduate students does not adequately prepare them for entrance into this exciting market (The growth of photonics continues to be at a terrific rate (16% in 1995 1996) and is expected to be as high as 18% this year .). To date, the majority of the training in lasers and photonics is conducted at the graduate level. With the continued advances in photonics, the need for earlier training becomes essential. Undergraduate students must be able to compete for and contribute directly to jobs in this industry. This is a problem with the educational method, not the abilities of the students. Undergraduate Research: Independent Study Projects As a further deterrent to undergraduate students pursuing photonics at the State University of New York at Buffalo (UB), as at many comparable schools, the undergraduate curriculum in Electrical and Computer Engineering leaves little room for students to investigate photonics. Therefore, in the spring of 1996 the author recruited his first undergraduate Independent Study students to work in the Laboratory for Advanced Spectroscopic Evaluation (LASE). It was hoped that this experience would encourage them to pursue jobs in the optics area and to provide essential hands-on experience. In the 1996-1997 school year the author was fortunate enough to have six undergraduates working on various independent study projects. Furthermore, these have been some of the best students at UB. These include a number of undergraduate students: four NASA Fellowship winners, three SUNYAB Presidential Fellowship winners, and one NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and Department of Defense Graduate Research Fellowship winner. Working with these students has been extremely rewarding, and only encourages continued involvement of undergraduate students in research. Topics of their work have included and will include (title of work, (fellowship), name, and graduation class): 1) Time-resolved Frequency Upconversion (NASA, NSF, DOD, Presidential) Christopher Striemer, ’97. 2) Fourier Optics and Imaging , (NASA, Presidential) Matthew Blasczak, BS ’97, MS ’98. 3) Data Acquisition and Control Software , (NASA, Presidential), Michael Albright, ’97. 4) Java Educational Applet Programming , (NASA), Menq Pan, ’97. 5) Optical Non-destructive Testing , (NASA), Nathan Merkel, ’98. 6) C++ and Java Programming , Matthew Matteo ’96, Ross Padak, Jon Drury, Keith Nowicki ’97. P ge 362.2 The rewarding experience of working with these students reinforced the authors belief that students are interested in learning but want to learn in an environment that is challenging and enjoyable. A few things were obvious when working with these students: 1) The independent study students worked as team members and tried to help each other as much as possible. 2) Because their projects were distinct, they knew that their grade depended on their individual performance (and not the lack of performance of classmates). 3) This cooperative environment encouraged them to perform at a very high level. Unfortunately, this type of environment is not available in many classes in college. After attending teaching workshops, a curriculum reform institute, and the 1997 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Meeting, the author realized that this style of teaching was called a collaborative (or cooperative) active learning environment . Extension of Ideas to Teaching As mentioned earlier, physics related courses have typically been taught using lecture style classrooms. Professors present the theory in the classroom and assign homework problems designed to teach the concepts of interest. This teaching style is largely ineffective in motivating students and stimulating student interest because it does not provide the essential experience that one gains with experience-based (hands-on) cooperative learning. Moreover, this teaching style tends to make students work in a more competitive or individualist environment that does not promote learning. Students focus more on how to get a good grade, rather than understanding, and helping each other to understand, the material. Any changes in the photonics curricula should address the general trends throughout the country. The photonics industry is now providing turnkey laser sources that make it possible to make state-of-the-art technologies available at the undergraduate level. Therefore, students at the undergraduate level can and should contribute to the photonic industry as photonic engineers. The author feels that an understanding of lasers and photonics can be taught without enormous amounts of math and physics because qualitative understanding can precede quantitative understanding. In addition, many companies are converting to a team-oriented work environment. Consequently, any teaching environment should teach interpersonal skills through classroom discussions and group projects. With this in mind, the author has converted the photonics courses at UB, traditionally taught as lectures, to laboratory courses with high design content which include cooperative (collaborative) learning, experience-based learning, and the application of information technologies. Specifically, RAQ (reading to answer questions) 5 and LAB (Launch, Activity, Build understanding) 6 learning techniques are being followed. These experience-based techniques have been successfully used in calculus and computer courses at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire. Furthermore, the photonics courses have home pages on the WWW, encourage the use of email, and require the use of technical professional software. Taken together, these changes provide an excellent discovery-oriented environment to enhance student learning. More importantly, these undergraduate laboratory courses with high design content stimulate interest in materials, lasers, and physics (areas with declining student populations and student interest). This teaching style has a number of advantages over using traditional lecture style teaching for teaching photonics: P ge 362.3 a) Incorporates experience-based learning (active vs. passive learning) by teaching students the basics and relying on laboratory/computer experience to stimulate an interest in theory. b) Incorporates cooperative learning groups. c) Instills the theoretical ideas more concretely by allowing students to design systems. d) Prepares students for jobs in the p