Assessing and Disseminating Group Learning Pedagogy in Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer while Using Hands-on Desktop Units with Interchangeable Cartridges

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This CCLI Phase 2 Expansion Project is helping faculty overcome resistance to using new learner-centered and team-oriented teaching pedagogies which they often see as time-consuming, ineffective paradigm shifts. The project is designing inexpensive, miniaturized desktop equipment called Desktop Hands-on Cooperative Learning Modules (DLMs) and testing them in Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer classes. These systems along with easy instructions are offering a convenient way for professors to try out new pedagogies, to intersperse them with lecture material, and to use them to reinforce important concepts. The four pedagogies include Cooperative, Hands-On, Active, and Problem-based (CHAPL) strategies. Six other universities, with a wide range of diverse students, are testing the model. Project assessment is not only validating the ideas, but is serving as a feedback mechanism. Student test and concept inventory outcomes as well as professor and student surveys are serving as a guide to update the modules, instructions, and problems that go with them. The project is disseminating its results through journals, national education conferences, a community of scholars, educational workshops, and invited seminars. This overall approach is serving as a test case model to evaluate ways of introducing new pedagogies and developing a community of scholars dedicated to them.