A Project-Based, Spiral Curriculum for Chemical Engineering

Abstract

We developed a project-based, spiral curriculum for the chemical engineering sophomore year. The spiral curriculum is a complete restructuring of the traditional curriculum, and emphasizes repetition and integration of topics with increasing complexity throughout the year. It is designed to increase motivation for learning and retention of basic skills and concepts. The new curriculum features multimedia instructional modules, peer-assisted cooperative learning structures, a "just-in-time" learning paradigm, and industrially relevant projects that introduce design concepts early in the year. Our goal is to address problems with the traditional academic structure that include poor retention, segmented learning, and the need to deliver a cost-effective education to a student audience of diverse backgrounds and learning styles. We will present a detailed description of the spiral curriculum and discuss the results of the first year's implementation. We are teaching the new sequence to a randomly selected group of sophomores and comparing their performance to students in the traditional sequence. Our evaluation design will be described including the variety of tools used. The assessment program includes a balance of formative and summative measurements, and qualitative and quantitative analyses. Results from the first year data collection will be discussed. These cover comparison of student comprehension of basic fundamentals, performance on open-ended problem solving, communication skills, and attitudes and satisfaction with group work and chemical engineering.

Full text

Session 1313
A Project-Based, Spiral Curriculum for Chemical Engineering
William M. Clark, David DiBiasio, and Anthony G. Dixon
Chemical Engineering Department, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Abstract
We developed a project-based, spiral curriculum for the chemical engineering sophomore
year. The spiral curriculum is a complete restructuring of the traditional curriculum, and
emphasizes repetition and integration of topics with increasing complexity throughout the
year. It is designed to increase motivation for learning and retention of basic skills and
concepts. The new curriculum features multimedia instructional modules, peer-assisted
cooperative learning structures, a “just-in-time” learning paradigm, and industrially
relevant projects that introduce design concepts early in the year. Our goal is to address
problems with the traditional academic structure that include poor retention, segmented
learning, and the need to deliver a cost-effective education to a student audience of
diverse backgrounds and learning styles.
We will present a detailed description of the spiral curriculum and discuss the results of
the first year’s implementation. We are teaching the new sequence to a randomly selected
group of sophomores and comparing their performance to students in the traditional
sequence. Our evaluation design will be described including the variety of tools used.
The assessment program includes a balance of formative and summative measurements,
and qualitative and quantitative analyses. Results from the first year data collection will
be discussed. These cover comparison of student comprehension of basic fundamentals,
performance on open-ended problem solving, communication skills, and attitudes and
satisfaction with group work and chemical engineering.
Introduction
Engineering education in the United States today faces many challenges including: (1)
attracting students with a diversity of backgrounds, learning styles, and pre-college
preparations to engineering careers, (2) maintaining interest and motivation during a four-
year undergraduate education, while at the same time assuring quality and relevance to
engineering practice, (3) preparing students for demanding careers that not only require
technical competence in an engineering discipline but also require communication,
teamwork and life-long learning skills, and (4) maintaining or enhancing quality
programs in the face of increasing financial pressure 1,2. It is clear to us that the
traditional approach to chemical engineering education is not well suited to meet these
challenges.

In the traditional approach, the chemical engineering curriculum provides a
compartmentalized sequence of courses that aims to build a solid, fundamental
foundation before providing integrated, capstone and/or engineering practice experiences
in the senior year. Problems that arise from this educational structure include: (1) lack of
motivation for learning fundamental material, (2) poor retention of sophomore- and
junior-level material that is needed for the senior-year integrated experiences, (3)
segmented learning resulting in a lack of ability to integrate material presented in several
different courses, and (4) lack of ability to extrapolate knowledge and skills gained in one
context (e.g., thermodynamics) to a different context (e.g., thermodynamic limitations in
reactor design). All too often, important material is presented once and assumed to be
“learned”. Moreover, the traditional lecture format has not been conducive to the
accommodation of different learning styles, to students assuming responsibility for their
own learning, nor to a desirable shift away from passive learning to active learning 3,4.
To address the challenges and deficiencies noted above, we have developed a project-
based, spiral curriculum for the chemical engineering sophomore year. By “spiral”, we
mean that the understanding of basic concepts and their interrelations are reinforced by
revisiting them in different contexts with ever increasing sophistication. By “project-
based”, we mean that students learn and apply chemical engineering principles by
actively completing a series of projects, including open-ended design projects, throughout
their sophomore year, rather than by simply passing a series of tests on related but
compartmentalized subjects in a lecture-based four course sequence. In this paper we
describe the new project-based, spiral curriculum, discuss our implementation and
assessment procedures, and present some preliminary results from our initial
implementation. We anticipate that the new curriculum will be transferable to other
settings and other timetables and that our approach can serve as a model for other
engineering disciplines.
Developing The Spiral Curriculum
At WPI, the academic year is divided into four terms of seven weeks each. The course
sequence for typical chemical engineering sophomores is shown in Figure 1. In the first
course, students learn material and energy balances, the basic mathematical tools used by
chemical engineers to analyze physical and chemical processes. In the second course,
they learn how to apply the first and second laws of classical thermodynamics to analyze
processes like steam power plants and refrigeration units. In the third course, they study
mixture thermodynamics, reaction equilibria, and phase equilibria, the phenomena that
underlies many separation processes. In the fourth course, they learn to analyze and
design equilibrium staged separation processes like distillation columns. At other
schools, this material would be covered in two 14-week semesters, making up the first
sequence of courses in chemical engineering. In this traditional course sequence, students
often see thermodynamics as a stand alone subject that has little relationship to the other
material. The fact that thermodynamics underlies the material and energy balance and
separation process courses is often obscured because in teaching the methodology for
those courses, the thermodynamic information is simplified or taken for granted as being
given in the problem statements. Also, note that traditional students spend about three
quarters of a year acquiring skills and concepts before actually applying them to any

design tasks in the last part of the year. Moreover, after two terms of thermodynamics,
students tend to forget the material balance skills they learn in the first term. Practicing
chemical engineers
Material and Energy Classical Mixture Staged Separation
Balances Thermodynamics Thermodynamics Processes
Figure 1. Traditional sophomore chemical engineering course sequence.
need to apply material and energy balance skills together with thermodynamic analysis
and property estimation to analyze and design chemical processes. We sought a
curriculum that would integrate the material from the four traditional courses and
reinforce the fundamental concepts by applying them to different situations throughout
the year.
To develop the spiral curriculum, we began by itemizing detailed course objectives
for the four traditional courses in our sophomore year. The itemized learning
objectives were then prioritized and reorganized into a spiral curriculum that can be
explained with the aid of Figure 2. The sophomore year was divided into four levels,
shown in the vertical direction on the diagram and corresponding to our four terms (at
WPI the four levels correspond to discrete courses, but that need not be the case).
Our four traditional courses are shown at the base of the diagram to provide a
reference frame for comparison. Students begin the new curriculum at Level 1 where
they are introduced to the basic skills and concepts from all four traditional courses.
In Level 2, in addition to introducing new material, we build upon the previously
acquired skills and concepts by requiring them to be re-used and extended to more
complex tasks. The succeeding two levels follow similarly, with the students re-
visiting topics met before at lower levels, extending them to more sophisticated uses
and ideas, as well as acquiring new knowledge and concepts needed to address more
challenging problems. It must be emphasized that each level draws material from all
four traditional courses.
This new curriculum forces repetition of important ideas throughout the entire year, and
emphasizes their connection to ideas usually presented entirely separately in a later
course. Hopefully, by the end of the year, every student will appreciate the integration of
the material and none will escape without knowing that chemical engineers are often
called upon to combine material and energy balances with thermodynamic information to
analyze or design processes.
Cooperative Group Projects
The next step in developing the project-based, spiral curriculum was to develop a series
of industrially relevant projects to use as a framework for achieving the learning
objectives at each level. Examples of project titles and the topics they cover are
presented in Table I. Two or three projects were developed for each level, some that

require laboratory experimentation and others that contain engineering design
components. Project
Figure 2. Schematic diagram of the spiral curriculum for sophomore chemical
engineering.
deliverables include a written report; the format varies from a brief memo report to a
formal report, depending on the project. Some projects also require an oral report.
Student teams are confronted with these projects before they have learned all the
fundamentals required to complete the projects. The fundamentals are then acquired on a
“just-in-time” basis through an assortment of channels including multimedia computer
instructional modules, lectures, workshops, reading assignments, and student discovery
from experimentation and/or the literature.
The project work is carried out by four-member cooperative learning groups. The groups
are assigned at random with adjustments aimed at distributing the strongest students
evenly across the groups. A team of three faculty (the authors) coordinates and evaluates
the cooperative learning groups. The faculty team also facilitates acquisition of the
information necessary to complete the projects. Peer learning assistants (PLAs) serve as

liaisons between students and faculty to help coordinate projects and facilitate
cooperative learning 5. PLAs are upper class students, trained in conflict resolution,
group dynamics and cooperative learning strategies. They neither tutor nor grade, but
help cooperative learning groups keep on track by asking questions, resolving conflicts
and directing floundering groups to the information required to complete the projects.
We have shown
Table I. Examples of projects from each level.
Level Project Topics Covered
1 Methylene chloride recovery Simple, steady state, material and energy
balance; ideal phase equilibria
2 Ammonia synthesis Material and energy balances with recycle;
phase equilibria; refrigeration analysis
3 Methanol/methyl acetate Non-ideal phase equilibria; material
balances; separation by pressure staged separation process design
swing distillation
4 Catalytic reactor regeneration Reaction equilibria; phase equilibria;
material balances with recycle
that the PLA-based cooperative learning structure, developed at WPI, increases student
learning and faculty productivity 6, 7.
Computer-aided learning tools are used where possible to help deliver the new
curriculum. We utilize the software developed at the University of Michigan for learning
chemical engineering fundamentals 8. We are also developing some interactive learning
tools specifically for the spiral curriculum 9.
In addition to the projects, each level includes some traditional homework problems and
tests taken individually. The project work, together with supplemental lectures and
workshops, provides students the opportunity to prepare for the tests.
Assessment Program and Preliminary Results
We are delivering the project-based, spiral curriculum for the first time in the 1997-98
academic year. Thus, when this manuscript goes to press, we are still gathering data for
evaluation of our initial offering. We present here, therefore, only a summary of our
assessment program and some preliminary results. Additional results will be presented at
the meeting.
We selected, at random, one third of our sophomore class as the “test” group for the spiral
curriculum. Their performance and attitudes are being compared to those of students in
the “control” group, taught simultaneously in our traditional course sequence. Our

overall project assessment goals are to evaluate how the spiral curriculum affects
students’ ability to: solve problems at several levels of cognition, work in teams, work
independently, master the fundamentals of chemical engineering, and integrate material
from several courses. We will also learn how it affects student attitudes and satisfaction
about chemical engineering and their professional development within the discipline. A
longitudinal structure is designed to measure immediate impact (at the end of the
sophomore year) and lasting impact (at the ends of the junior and senior years, and
following graduation). External consultants are being used to provide objective
assessment through a variety or qualitative and quantitative measures. These include
surveys, interviews, videotaping of class and project work, student tests and project
reports, end of term course evaluations, a design competition, and an end-of-year
comprehensive exam. We are also concerned with the costs and benefits of curriculum
reform. A cost/benefit analysis of the project costs, including faculty time, and the
benefits derived is being conducted.
The spiral curriculum has been well received by students in the initial offering.
Preliminary results indicate a qualitatively different attitude toward team work between
the test and control group students. The test students have encountered group work
throughout the year. When surveyed about the advantages and disadvantages of group
work, they found nothing but advantages. The control students have had limited exposure
to group project work and their surveys indicate a mixture of perceived advantages and
disadvantages that reveal a more individualistic approach than that of the test students.
The spiral curriculum also appears to have made a positive influence on student’s
satisfaction with their major. Retention of students in the test group has been better than
in the control. Less than ten percent of the test group changed majors during the first
year and all changes were made during the first term. About twenty percent of the control
group changed majors with half of those changes occurring during the third term. We are
eager to learn about the results of more qualitative and quantitative assessment measures
and will report those when they are obtained.
Acknowledgments
Funding for this project by the U. S. Dept. of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of
Postsecondary Education is gratefully acknowledged.
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WILLIAM M. CLARK is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at WPI. He holds B. S. and
Ph.D. degrees in Chemical Engineering from Clemson University and Rice University, respectively and has
twelve years of experience teaching thermodynamics, unit operations, and separation processes. Dr. Clark’s
educational research focuses on developing and evaluating computer-aided learning tools.
DAVID DIBIASIO is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at WPI. He received B.S., M.S.,
and Ph.D. degrees in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University. He worked for the DuPont company
and has 18 years experience teaching chemical engineering. His educational work focuses on active and
cooperative learning, and educational assessment.
ANTHONY G. DIXON is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at WPI. He holds a B.S. degree in
Mathematics and a Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Edinburgh. He has
eighteen years of experience teaching applied mathematics for chemical engineers, process design and
transport phenomena. His educational research has included the development of interactive graphics
software to aid in teaching mathematics to engineers.