(455b) Building Student Skills Via Visual Learning In the Material and Energy Balance Class

The material and energy balance class is frequently the “gateway” class in chemical engineering.  Statistics over the past 24 years at this school show that 35% of the students who enroll in the material/energy balance class either fail,  withdraw, or receive a grade lower than a “C”.  This statistic does not seem to be unique to this institution but is, rather, a general trend throughout the United States.  A large majority of these (66%) never complete their chemical engineering degree.  The students who fail to successfully complete the material/energy balance class show a wide variety of academic abilities, as measured by SAT scores or high school GPA.  However, the academic abilities of those students who fail to successfully complete the material/energy balance class and those who successfully complete the class are virtually identical.  Why, then, do 35% of students fail to complete the material and energy balance course?

            To try and improve the success rate of students in the material and energy balance class we have identified what we believe are certain key weak steps in the problem solving capabilities of students; an inability to transform a written description of a situation into a proper graphical representation and an inability to transform a graphical representation into a proper mathematical representation.  To strengthen the student’s abilities in these areas we have developed a software package that guides students through these transformations.  By providing a limited structuring of the written to graphical and graphical to mathematical transformations the students can build strengths in these areas with the anticipation that they ultimately will no  longer use the software but will be able to perform these activities on their own.  To date the software has demonstrated its effectiveness in increasing the correctness of student solutions as well as building transferable skills to situations where the structuring provided by the software is no longer being used.  This software is now being incorporated into a studio based implementation to determine if further improvements in student learning can be developed.