Enhancing Engineering Education with Active Learning and Team-Based Strategies

1. Active Learning and Team-Based Learning in the Engineering Classroom Bill Weeks ECE Department NFTS Luncheon

2. Outline • Active Learning • Barriers • Goals • Team-Based Learning • Examples • Testimonials • Results

3. Active Learning • Bonwell and Eison: an educational process that "involves students in doing things and thinking about the things they are doing” • Course Goals • Fink’s Taxonomy of Significant Learning • Implementation of Educational Activities

4. Efficacy of Active Learning • Pause Procedure • Ruhl, Hughes, and Schloss • Discussion Activities • McKeachie, et al • Cooperative Learning • Johnson, Johnson, and Smith • Team-Based Learning (TBL) • Fink

5. Barriers to Implementation • Amount of material • Instructor preparation time • Large classes • Lack of resources and materials • Perceived risks

6. Taxonomy of Significant Learning • Foundational Knowledge • Application • Integration • Human Dimension • Caring • Learning How to Learn

7. Goals • Goals • Students will understand and remember key concepts from the main content areas listed in the topical outline (below). • For a given communication channel, students will be able to compute the maximum rate of reliable transmission and design, evaluate, and implement codes that achieve capacity with reasonable decoding complexity. • Students will build the knowledge and develop the skills necessary to read and understand articles written in journals such as the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. • Students will learn how to work effectively in a group setting to accomplish goals related to a coding theory project. • Students will appreciate the importance of coding theory and information theory and its impact on society. • Students will be able to direct their own learning in understanding, designing and evaluating new codes.

8. Team-Based Learning (Fink) • Groups of 5-7 students • Maintain groups throughout semester • Significant portion of grade • Constant feedback • Evaluate individual contributions • Reading Quiz – Homework – Team Project

9. Code Design Challenge • Teams of 3 or 4 • Design several codes • Evaluation • Self • Competition • Team members • Reward points

10. Active Learning Techniques Old Active Grading Two Tests 40% Final Exam 40% Homework 15% Participation 5% Grading Final Exam 30% Midterm Exam 20% Group Work 10% Reading Quizzes 10% Homework (rough) 5% Homework (final) 5% Professionalism 5% Reflections 5% Presentation 5% Learning Portfolio 5%

11. Testimonials • Excerpted from Learning Portfolios • Not anonymous • Careful instructions • Exuberant praise • Comparison

12. Results

13. Reasons • Assignments/Tests • Educational Value • Stimulation/Motivation • Instructor Experience • Different Textbook

14. Conclusions • Progression • Lecture – Active Techniques - TBL • Cover more material • Soft skills encouraged • Lifelong learning • Improved student morale • Improved instructor morale