Comparison of teaching styles in chemical engineering

Summary form only given. The interplay between faculty instructional techniques, student learning styles, and course content impacts significantly the effectiveness of the learning experience for students. It is hypothesized here that various types of content and skills are best taught using different methods. Our goal will be to document student preferences in terms of instructional style, content motivation, and problem solving for various types of chemical engineering course content, and to relate this in some fashion to student performance. We are conducting an experiment in which these topics will be explored. The students´ attitudes about various techniques will be documented based on in-class anonymous surveys and on the observations of students not participating in the classes but documenting student responses. The trend from teacher-centered to learner-centered education in chemical engineering has put forth the question of how students respond to differing styles of teaching. In order to study student response to various teaching styles, we have been observing chemical engineering classes at Arizona State University (ASU). Freshman engineering classes at ASU are highly cooperative, but as students enter specific disciplines and higher level courses, traditional lecture styles become more common. Our hypothesis is that students prefer certain types of teaching for different types of learning content. We observed sophomore and junior level chemical engineering classes where both cooperative and traditional styles are employed by various faculty.