Teaching materials to engineering students
This report presents a brief summary of a workshop hosted by the UK Centre
for Materials Education at the University of Birmingham on 12 June 2001,
looking at the issues of teaching materials to engineering students.
Issues facing teachers
Following on from morning presentations by Caroline Baillie and Charles
May, three main issues arose from a discussion involving all delegates:
- Classes often consist of students of mixed ability and backgrounds,
with and without chemistry or maths. The class may even be from different
disciplines or branches of engineering. We have to teach them the same
core materials course - how can we deal with this?
- What are the key concepts needed in a first year course for engineering
students? What do they need in their future? Is the core course in first
year for engineering students the same as for first year materials students?
- How do we motivate and stimulate students and develop a 'feel' for
a material and a mental picture of how a material behaves?
Working groups
The afternoon session consisted of three groups looking at specific issues
of:
- Problem based learning - will this solve some of our problems?
- Increasing student motivation for studying materials
- Designing a common 1st year course of materials for engineers
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