(61f) Development of Hands-on Activities Incorporated into a Critical Thinking Module for Chemical Engineering Courses

A course module on critical thinking was de for chemical engineering students, which incorporates includes hands-on activities for the students to experience in the classroom. Critical thinking is an important skill for engineering students to be exposed to and to internalize as part of their professional development. However, instructors find it challenging to explain what critical thinking is, and harder to actually teach it in engineering courses. Therefore, it is infrequently taught intentionally in engineering courses. As part of a module on critical thinking for freshman, sophomore, and senior chemical engineering courses, this instructor has utilized in-class hands-on group activities to help students make the connection between abstract concepts and real-world applications that represents the gist of critical thinking for engineers.

This paper presents the selection, development, and evaluation of multiple hands-on activities used for this critical thinking module. As examples, some current hands-on activities utilized in this course module are calculating the speed of the tip of a wind turbine blade based on a short video, determining the pore volume of a container holding solid particles (beads or gravel), and estimating the difference in gas versus liquid densities by watching a simple gas evolution reaction. The objective with each activity is to have students remember simple qualitative or quantitative principles or equations from prior STEM course work, make observations about the real-world problem that is posed, perhaps draw on some personal experience, and finally answer a technical engineering-oriented question by bringing all of these elements together. Therefore, the hands-on activities are evaluated for selection and incorporation into the module based upon (a) STEM principles involved, (b) complexity of calculations required, (c) opportunity for personal experience to play a part, and (d) extent to which the activity demonstrates relationship between the abstract and the real-world applications. An additional consideration for the hands-on activities is assessing the appropriateness of the academic level in which it is used. After these hands-on activities have been used once or twice, they are reviewed for continued use, refinement or minor alteration, or withdrawal, based upon how well they work and fit the intended purpose of the critical thinking exercise. Outcomes from implementing these hands-on activities in the critical thinking module are included in the presentation.