Instrumentation For a Vertically-Integrated Multidisciplinary Engineering Laboratory Sequence

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The mission statement of the Engineering Division at the Colorado School of Mines prescribes the following specific goals: to provide our students with a solid foundation in engineering principles and the skills to adapt to rapidly changing industries and advanced technologies; and, to enhance the life-long learning ability of our students. This proposal seeks funding to implement a Multidisciplinary Engineering Laboratory (MEL) sequence to achieve these goals. We will create a vertically-integrated, laboratory-centered educational pedagogy and link these laboratories to a suite of core engineering science classes, horizontally integrating labs with courses. Students will apply inquiry based methods to explore and discover critical engineering concepts and theory. The proposed laboratory sequence differs in philosophy, pedagogy, and content from traditional labs. In MEL, students are given a set of equipment, a set of reference materials, and a set of questions. Posing the questions properly is critical; the questions must lead the students into higher levels of thinking. The students explore various procedures and equipment set-ups - which they design - to answer the questions. Fundamental engineering principles, such as conservation and equilibrium, are stressed. In a vertically integrated laboratory sequence, we can increase knowledge sequentially in levels of thinking, experimental design, experimental methods, instrumentation, data analysis, teamwork, communications and modeling. With support from the ILI, we will be able to modernize the equipment to suit the modernization of the teaching/learning approach of these labs.