Abstract:

When faced with a homework assignment or an examination, most undergraduate students in engineering begin the solution to a problem by thinking of or attempting to find a “formula” to solve the problem. Since most do not have the practical experience to determine the reasonableness of the resulting answer, they assume that the answer is correct so long as the “formula” worked for them in getting a number out of the exercise. It is not uncommon to receive from students solutions to problems in heat transfer in which a temperature in a real system is determined to be more than that of the sun or the thermal efficiency of a real thermodynamic cycle is negative or exceeding the Carnot limit without the student taking the time to determine whether a solution makes sense or not.

A preliminary approach to enhance teaching and learning in undergraduate thermal science classes, specifically Thermodynamics, Applied Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer, is proposed and presented in this paper. The approach, a new paradigm, is introduced to change the way students learn thermal science subjects in a mechanical engineering curriculum. The approach is enforced in the course of working on homework assignments and also employed in the design of examination problems. In the paradigm, homework and examinations are presented to students in a “task breakdown” format in which students are carefully guided to solve a problem from basic principles rather than the traditional approach that they are used to since their days of high school and well into a few semesters of college education. To enhance learning in which students are able to retain course materials from one course to the next, a homework assignment problem or one on an examination is framed with numerous parts in which the student is required to think critically about each aspect of the problem; this approach teaches the student to understand that the “real world” is not made up of the back-of-the-book textbook problems that are over-simplified to be solved by the traditional approach in which they take a “formula approach” attitude in problem solving.

In the paradigm proposed in this paper, homework assignments are executed by students in the traditional approach as well as in the proposed task allocation method. To test the hypothesis that students perform better and retain course materials in the task allocation method, assignments are alternated between the two approaches among all students on a weekly basis during the semester. Based on the performance on the assignments, preliminary data obtained shows that students perform better when the homework assignments are presented in a task breakdown format. Details provided in the paper include example problems in the traditional format and the new paradigm format with a documentation of students’ performance to show the effectiveness of the new paradigm of task breakdown in enhancing the teaching and learning of thermal science subjects. An extension to other subjects in a typical mechanical engineering curriculum is proposed in concluding the paper.

Keywords:

Engineering education, problem-based learning, task breakdown.