Skempton Teaching Newsletter #4
Issue 4 (November 2019)
Flipped classroom – Earlier this month, Prof. Mike Templeton applied the flipped classroom principle in a third year UG module on Environmental Engineering. Two of the lectures in the module were flipped, to allow comparison between the traditional pedagogy and the flipped approach. In the traditional set-up, students were given a 2 hour lecture (supported by printed notes) followed by a 1 hour tutorial session, during which engineering problems were solved by individual students, assisted by GTAs.
In the flipped approach, printed lecture notes were distributed two days ahead, and a 1 hour slot was timetabled during which students could study these notes. The timetabling of this hour was a deliberate choice, in order not to push work from in-class activities to homework. In the next session, two days later, students had a 2 hour slot, during which, firstly, questions could be asked to allow prof. Templeton to clarify tricky parts of the notes. Secondly, students worked on two marked engineering problems in groups of 4 students, again with assistance of GTAs as well as of the professor. Anyone interested in trying the flipped classroom approach is invited to contact Mike to get some helpful pointers.
Flipped classroom – Earlier this month, Prof. Mike Templeton applied the flipped classroom principle in a third year UG module on Environmental Engineering. Two of the lectures in the module were flipped, to allow comparison between the traditional pedagogy and the flipped approach. In the traditional set-up, students were given a 2 hour lecture (supported by printed notes) followed by a 1 hour tutorial session, during which engineering problems were solved by individual students, assisted by GTAs.
In the flipped approach, printed lecture notes were distributed two days ahead, and a 1 hour slot was timetabled during which students could study these notes. The timetabling of this hour was a deliberate choice, in order not to push work from in-class activities to homework. In the next session, two days later, students had a 2 hour slot, during which, firstly, questions could be asked to allow prof. Templeton to clarify tricky parts of the notes. Secondly, students worked on two marked engineering problems in groups of 4 students, again with assistance of GTAs as well as of the professor. Anyone interested in trying the flipped classroom approach is invited to contact Mike to get some helpful pointers.
A Blackboard survey (n=88 of 99 students) showed that students generally preferred the flipped approach compared to the regular one. At the same time, they felt that if every teacher would embrace the approach, things might be different. On the open-ended question in the survey, asking to provide suggestions for further improvement, also other very useful comments were made, that are currently being evaluated. Of course, we are also curious to learn about the effectiveness of the teaching from the outcomes of the coursework and exams.
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Model making – designing buildings is very much about 3D-thinking. To explain spatial concepts in building design, lecturer Ate Snijder at TU Delft, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment (ranked second, just behind UCL The Bartlett in THE rankings on subject) provided all 400 first year UG students with a scale 1:100 laser-cut kit of a real residential building. A collection of about 10 different Dutch houses was prepared by Ate's team of GTAs, to allow sufficient variation. Each kit came with a set of 2D-drawings, and the students were asked to build the model using the original construction drawings as a manual. The models not only helped in developing a 3D-mindset among this group of future architects, but also allowed lecturers to reuse the models later on in the term, addressing various aspects in their tutoring, such as the effectiveness of the load bearing structure, energy efficiency and proportions. The images give an impression of the work in the Studio.
Water and Wastewater Engineering field trip – during the past weeks, Dr. Ivan Stoianov took the effort of organising two field trips for all students in the module “CIVE97013 - Water and Wastewater Engineering”. They combined the two visits to Mogden WWTW and to Anglian Water’s Cotton Valley WWTW with a coursework assignment in which an overview was asked of the wastewater and sludge treatment process. Each tour was guided by a knowledgeable scientist in the field.
Although organisation of such a field trip is challenging due to logistics and required safety, they give a unique insight in and illustration of the processes discussed during the theoretical parts of the module. Many students do not realise the scale of these works until they have seen them in real life. The group have been doing these site visits for the last two years (both UG and MSc students) as the feedback from students has been very positive. |
Building Physics taught physical – Having the privilege to coordinate and partially teach the MSc module CIE4220 Introduction to Building Physics and Façades at TU Delft, I want to share an example of engaging teaching by one of my colleagues with you. This module is taught to a group of approximately 40 domestic and international MSc students and consists of 3 content parts:
To support his explanation of quite fundamental material (Planck’s Law and Stefan-Boltzmann’s law), Eric brought an infrared camera to class, which sent real-time footage to the projector. The camera output offered a clear demonstration of the concepts. Students were asked to predict the outcomes of various small in-class experiments, e.g. pointing the camera at windows, radiators, open windows, aluminium foil, human bodies, and so on. Understanding of heat transfer mechanisms is extremely important, for example for optimising passive heating of buildings by solar radiation, and I’m sure students will remember this lecture and review the content with above average interest now.
- a Design Studio, in which students learn to draft 2D details of façade solutions (taught by an architect),
- lectures on Façades, covering the theory behind façade design and providing a taxonomy of different façade types (taught by me),
- Building Physics lectures, covering a.o. acoustics, heat transfer, moisture transfer, daylight, sunlight and energy efficiency (taught by experts in each of these fields).
To support his explanation of quite fundamental material (Planck’s Law and Stefan-Boltzmann’s law), Eric brought an infrared camera to class, which sent real-time footage to the projector. The camera output offered a clear demonstration of the concepts. Students were asked to predict the outcomes of various small in-class experiments, e.g. pointing the camera at windows, radiators, open windows, aluminium foil, human bodies, and so on. Understanding of heat transfer mechanisms is extremely important, for example for optimising passive heating of buildings by solar radiation, and I’m sure students will remember this lecture and review the content with above average interest now.
Short news
- Educational Technology – over the past weeks, proposals of prof. Catherine O’Sullivan, Dr. Ioannis Karmpadakis and Dr. Antonio Carraro have been awarded modest Departmental funding for GTA-support. All three proposals were about the use of new educational technology in modules taught in the coming Spring term. Assisted by their GTAs Sihua Chen, Huo Chong and Camelia Dominguez plus the Faculty’s Ed Tech team, they are working on various new things, such as digital testing and training, using Blackboard Quizzes, Möbius Learn (previously known as Maple TA) and more. They selected a limited number of achievable targets within the 25 hours available per project and doable in the limited timespan until the start of the term. In future newsletters we will update you on the results.
- Assigning students to groups – You will remember the comment of students brought to your attention by our DUGS, that students often end up in groups for their project work with many of the same students, because staff using the same (e.g. alphabetic) means of assigning students to groups. Dr. Marc Stettler reported back an interesting approach he successfully used in his group project: “I have a group project and I would do a random assignment but would get negative comments in SOLE each year. This year I tried something different – I asked them to choose one of the JBM threads that they thought meant more to them and separate into four groups. Then for each of the four groups, I asked them to line up in order of how confident they were at public speaking. I then had a room of students essentially in one line. I then gave each person a number 1-8 (reflecting 8 groups). I’m hoping this mixes up interests and competency levels. Early days but seemed to work ok – group discussion was more active than in previous years. The two separation questions could be mixed up to suit the module.”
- I-Explore Stemm proposals – two staff members successfully proposed the design of a new I-Explore Stemm module: Dr. Arnab Majumdar proposed “The science of crowds: movement, behaviour and design” and Dr Christian Málaga-Chuquitaype proposed “Building resilient structures: the science and technology of earthquake engineering”. Both will be awarded funding from central College to develop these modules, congrats!
- THE Teaching Excellence Summit – watch this video lecture with Nobel Laureate prof. Carl Wieman advocating active learning pedagogies, showing evidence, but meanwhile probably not making friends at CalTech.
Agenda:
Find Journals on Educational Research (via CHERS)
Educational Research Toolkit (via CHERS)
- Short talk Roel Schipper + discussion on Teaching Enhancements at CHERSNet Talking Teaching series,
30th January 2020, 12-2 pm - Workshops in near future on use of Blackboard Learn (via EDU): here
- Imperial STAR Framework review panel dates: here
Find Journals on Educational Research (via CHERS)
Educational Research Toolkit (via CHERS)
Colofon
The Skempton Teaching Newsletter is an initiative to keep academic staff of Imperial College updated on teaching-related news from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Also I hope to give you a frequent update on teaching developments at IC and worldwide that might be relevant for our Department. If you have any suggestions or news from your own teaching that might be interesting for our Department, please let me know!
Roel Schipper
Strategic Senior Teaching Fellow
Imperial College London
Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering
South Kensington Campus, Skempton building, room 308A
e-mail: [email protected]
www.tudelft.nl/hrschipper roelschipper.weebly.com/
The Skempton Teaching Newsletter is an initiative to keep academic staff of Imperial College updated on teaching-related news from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Also I hope to give you a frequent update on teaching developments at IC and worldwide that might be relevant for our Department. If you have any suggestions or news from your own teaching that might be interesting for our Department, please let me know!
Roel Schipper
Strategic Senior Teaching Fellow
Imperial College London
Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering
South Kensington Campus, Skempton building, room 308A
e-mail: [email protected]
www.tudelft.nl/hrschipper roelschipper.weebly.com/