Abstract:

The area of environment health is an important part of the engineering work. At the Tampere University of Technology, we have developed a course in Environment Health for students in the energy and environmental technology area. This paper looks to present the course and analyze the feedback of its students. Students participate in the course during their second year and don’t require any background information. The course is also open to students from other degree programs. Last year 68 students participated in course (35 female and 33 male). The course delivery consisted of taught lectures with the associated material uploaded to a virtual learning environment - Moodle. The topics of lectures were as follows: 1) Presentation of the course and an introduction to environmental health; 2) Epidemics, pandemics and travel; 3) Health issues related to the energy area; 4) Exposure to electromagnetic fields; 5) Health problems caused by chemicals; and 6) The environment and psychological well-being. The students read the course book “Environment health (Mussalo-Rauhamaa et al. 2007)” in Finnish. At the end of the course, students underwent an exam, which included questions drawn from issues identified in the lecture content and the book. In the first exam, the students conducted anonymous feedback that was not mandatory do it. Sections for each lecture included the statement “the topic of the lecture was interesting”. In this survey, students were given the option to select a rating from 0 to 5, with 5 being the highest mark. The evaluation in order from the lowest mark to the highest is: I absolutely don't agree, I don't agree, I don't know, I agree and I fully agree. In all of the feedback data (lecture 1-6 together), 3% of the participated student was absolutely disagreed with the topic of the lecture, 13% disagreed, 24% did not know, 42% agreed and 18% fully agreed. Additionally, there was a question concerning lecture attendance, with response options of; I attended, partly attended, did not attended but answered or did not attended and not answered. On average the students surveyed participated in 31%, 14% partly participated, 25% did not participate but responded while neither participate nor responded to 30%. Generally, students responded that the topics of the lectures were interesting, however attendance was not mandatory and students could undertake the exam having read the course book and lecture materials, made available on Moodle. In the final paper, we will look to analyze and present further details of the course and feedback from students.

Keywords:

Feedback, Environment Health, e-learning.