Abstract

Computational methods have become increasingly used in both academia and industry. At the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE), as part of a university-funded educational innovation program, has integrated computation throughout its undergraduate courses since 2014. Within this curriculum, students are asked to solve practical problems related to their coursework using computational tools in all required courses and some electives. Partly in response to feedback from students, we have expanded our current curriculum to include more computational modules. A computational module was added to the freshman Introduction to Materials Science and Engineering class; thus, students will be expected to use computational tools from their first year onwards. In this paper, we survey students who are currently taking courses with integrated computation to explore the effects of gradually introducing students to programming as well as both macro- and micro-scale simulations over multiple years. We investigate the improving confidence level of students, their attitude towards computational tools, and their satisfaction with our curriculum reform. We also updated our survey to be more detailed and consistent between classes to aid in further improvements of our MSE curriculum.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number797
JournalASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings
Volume2020-June
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 22 2020
Event2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference, ASEE 2020 - Virtual, Online
Duration: Jun 22 2020Jun 26 2020

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Engineering

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Impact of integrating computation into undergraduate curriculum: New modules and long-term trends'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this