TY - JOUR
T1 - Impact of integrating computation into undergraduate curriculum
T2 - 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference, ASEE 2020
AU - Lu, Grace M.
AU - Trinkle, Dallas R.
AU - Schleife, Andre
AU - Leal, Cecilia
AU - Krogstad, Jessica
AU - Maass, Robert
AU - Bellon, Pascal
AU - Huang, Pinshane Y.
AU - Perry, Nicola H.
AU - West, Matthew
AU - Bretl, Timothy
AU - Herman, Geoffrey L.
N1 - Funding Information:
Cecília Leal is an Associate Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering with affiliations at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, the Materials Research Laboratory, and the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She graduated in Industrial Chemistry from Coimbra University in Portugal and received her Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Lund University, supervised by Prof. Wennerström. After working for a year in the Norwegian Radium Hospital, she joined Prof. Safinya’s Lab at the University of California in Santa Barbara as a postdoctoral fellow. Her research interests focus on the characterization and functionalization of lipid materials for cellular delivery. She is the recipient of a number of distinctions including the National Science Foundation CAREER award and the NIH New innovator award.
Funding Information:
This work received IRB approval under protocol number 14094. This work was supported by the College of Engineering and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as part of the Strategic Instructional Initiatives Program (SIIP), by a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to J.A.K. (Grant No. 1654182), by a NSF CAREER Award to P.H. (Grand No. DMR-1846206) by a NSF CAREER Award to R.M. (Grant No. 1654065), by a NSF CAREER Award to C.L. (Grant No. DMR-1554435), by a NSF CAREER Award to A.S. (Grant No. DMR-1555153), a NSF Grant to N.H.P (Grant No. DMR-1945482), and by a NSF Grant to P.B. (Grant No. DMR-1709857). This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. 1746047. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Publisher Copyright:
© American Society for Engineering Education 2020.
PY - 2020/6/22
Y1 - 2020/6/22
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
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U2 - 10.18260/1-2--34754
DO - 10.18260/1-2--34754
M3 - Conference article
AN - SCOPUS:85095787794
SN - 2153-5965
VL - 2020-June
JO - ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings
JF - ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings
M1 - 797
Y2 - 22 June 2020 through 26 June 2020
ER -