Chemical Engineering

First year chemical engineering students’ understanding of the mole was investigated and an intervention designed to improve their grasp of this fundamental concept. Students’ ideas were initially elicited in a series of group interviews. These findings were checked against a multiple-choice test which was developed and administered to the whole class. The intervention comprised a series of activities with a focus on `tangible objects’ which could provide students with a visual/experiential point of reference. Both qualitative and quantitative assessments indicated a strong positive effect of the intervention. This approach now forms part of the first year curriculum at the University of Cape Town. Although these students’ problems were focused on the concepts of gmol, lbmol, and kmol, the misconceptions identified were found to link strongly to those previously reported in the literature for gmol, which suggests a broad applicability of the results obtained.

This paper reports on an investigation into the reasons students give for studying engineering. The data was obtained from free-form responses of a sample of first year engineering students at three tertiary institutions in the Western Cape. It was found that male and female, black and white South African students enter the engineering profession for different sets of reasons. The choice of engineering discipline also appears to be substantially different for black and white students. One category of reasons, Social Identity, not previously reflected in studies of this kind, clearly indicates that career choice is influenced by the socio-political environment. These results have implications for initiatives designed to attract previously underrepresented groups into
engineering careers.

This paper seeks to inform current initiatives to attract more women to study engineering.  The pool of suitably qualified students at UCT was investigated, and from this group an interviewee sample was drawn of top achievers in school mathematics and physical science who had elected to study courses other than engineering.  The interviews yielded information on the process of career choice amongst these students.  Findings concerned the universality of medicine as an initial choice, and the current attraction towards commerce.  Engineering was only considered by students who ultimately chose B.Sc. degrees, and these were the only students who had a positive experience of school physical science.

In this paper the metacognitive development of students in a second year chemical engineering course (which had such development as an explicit aim) is investigated. Journal data from the class were analysed and a framework comprising our different areas of metacognitive development was arrived at. Within each area, key shifts in approach were identified. The first area (category 1) concerns students’ knowledge and awareness (conceptions) of learning, and the important development in this area was from a focus on solving problems towards a stronger valuing of conceptual understanding. The second and third areas deal with aspects of control. The second area (category 2a) is that of organising one’s learning, and here students were seen to develop from an uninformed focus on discipline and time management, towards a more metacognitively informed use of resources. The third area (category 2b) is monitoring of learning, with the key shift here from naïvely accepting outside judgements, to using them strategically for purposes of self-assessment. The fourth area (category 3) involves students’ sense of a purpose for learning beyond the subject. Important developments here were both in terms of a career goal, as well as personal growth. Data from interviews with five students largely confirmed the validity of these categories, as well as illustrating that different students showed development in different areas.

In this article it is argued that metacognitive development can be viewed as a shift in the approach to learning used by a student. This theoretical position is used to investigate the metacognitive development of a group of students on a course which was aiming to develop deep approaches and conceptual understanding. Considerable diversity was found in the approaches used by students, and also in the degrees to which those not initially using a conceptual (deep) approach were able to develop this approach. In those students initially using an algorithmic approach, one was able to make this transition fairly early on in the course, while others changed to different degrees at later stages. The students using information-based  pproaches did not display any appreciable metacognitive development during this course. The study confirms that the promotion of metacognitive development (i.e. the use of deep approaches) is not easily achieved, and suggests certain aspects of the course environment that are either supportive of or detrimental to metacognitive development.

In this response to Waghid (2000) the authors question the validity of conclusions reached from an examination of the proceedings of an engineering education conference in SouthAfrica. The authors argue that these papers do not represent the views of engineering educators in general. Furthermore they query the way in which Waghid uses reference to teaching methods in these papers to deduce the theoretical perspective of the presenters. It is suggested that the views of the educators involved in this conference and others like it in South Africa, can be characterised as falling within a broad interpretivist (constructivist) perspective. Finally, the authors agree that an engagement with a critical perspective would contribute significantly to the transformation of the culture of engineering education in South Africa.

Students’ approaches to learning in a second year chemical engineering course were investigated by means of a qualitative research project which utilized interview and journal data from a group of 11 students. Three approaches to learning were identified in this context: a conceptual approach (similar to the classic deep approach), in which the intention is to understand concepts; an algorithmic approach, in which the focus is on calculation methods; and an information-based approach, in which the intention is to gather and remember information. The latter two approaches can both be considered forms of the surface approach in that the fundamental intention does not involve understanding. This paper presents an analysis of students’ responses to a series of conceptual questions in which the use of particular approaches is identified. The research presented in this paper supports the notion that particular forms of deep and surface approaches might be found in specific contexts.

This paper supports Paul Ramsden’s call to look beyond students’ approaches to learning towards their perceptions of the educational context. However, we argue that Ramsden’s suggestions for an analysis of student perceptions are somewhat limited, and present an method which is more qualitatively and linguistically grounded. In the present study, this method was used to analyse students’ perceptions of time in a second year chemical engineering course. Regardless of approach to learning, all students displayed two distinct ways of talking about time, one reflecting a perception of ‘being in control’ and the other a perception of ‘being out of control’ of time. Where students using a conceptual approach differed to the others was in the way they used perceptions of ‘being in control’, specifically in the way they chose to allocate time. For those not using a conceptual approach, the highly time-pressured environment seemed to militate against the adoption of a conceptual approach.

This study examines the factors that influenced first-year students in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Cape Town to follow a career in mechanical
engineering. The data were collected over two years from first year students during the first week of each academic year as part of a questionnaire that asked various questions relating to the students’ choice of what and where to study. A qualitative analysis of the responses resulted in ten categories of influence being developed: "exposure to engineering career", "school subjects", "socialisers", "if not, then", "specific career plan", "career rewards", "flexibility and challenge", "physical activities", "intellectual activities" and "social identity". These were subsequently grouped into four macro-categories: "societal influences", "personal career vision", "product related activities" and "social/civic  responsibility". A quantitative analysis showed significant differences between the responses on the basis of race and gender. The results of this study show that different factors influence particular groups of learners during their career choice process. Focused interventions around these factors can serve to encourage more learners to follow a career in mechanical engineering.

For the novice teacher looking for advice, or the experienced teacher hoping to do something new, there is certainly no shortage of suggestions on how to improve one’s teaching practice, or novel ideas to apply in one’s course.  There are more conferences, books, societies, magazines, and articles on the web than even a team of people could hope to ingest in a lifetime.  Indeed this very book contains an excellent collection of current and useful exemplars of innovative practice.  What is possibly less written about is the very common experience of finding out that things don’t work out quite as one has planned.  Although there are often very positive initial student responses to a new and different thing happening in their course, with time it might often become apparent that the dramatic planned for change in student learning is somewhat elusive, at least for part of the class.  The present chapter explores student responses to a second year chemical engineering course where the lecturer had adopted a range of innovative teaching practices with the intention of promoting better learning.  In particular, a closer look is taken at instances where student learning outcomes did not match the lecturer’s intentions, with the hope that this might provide useful insights for engineering educators who are themselves embarking upon change in their classroom practice.

This paper reports on an investigation which analysed the responses of 32 third year chemical engineering students to an approach to learning inventory.  The analysis showed a striking homogeneity in response with generally high scores on scales indicating a deep approach and metacognitive control.  This was however at odds with the largely poor learning outcomes displayed by these students in the course under scrutiny in the project.  Furthermore, an analysis of students who gave responses at odds with the majority of the class showed that these were not the failing students, as might be predicted by student learning theory, but that these were frequently quite successful students.  A final analysis of interview data from one of these ‘outlier’ students showed how in her case at least she was certainly not a surface learner but that language difficulties might be the reason for her particular response.  This study raises questions about the validity and utility of student learning inventories, but also raises questions about the general theoretical constructs that underpin these research approaches.

It has been proposed that situated cognition theory, in which learning is conceptualized as induction into a community of practice through the activity of legitimate peripheral participation, offers an appropriate theoretical perspective for examining issues of gender in science education. This study critically engages with this proposal by means of an  investigation of the vacation work experiences of a group of South African final-year civil and chemical engineering students. Issues of race and gender appeared prominently and spontaneously in focus group and interview data. An analysis of these data using the situated cognition framework allowed for a deeper understanding of these issues and their impact on
learning. It was found that access to legitimate peripheral participation was critical for good learning outcomes (associated with positive identity formation) while denial of this access (as sometimes experienced by black and female students) appeared to be related to less effective learning and poor feelings of self-worth.

This article describes two approaches to learning (in addition to the classic deep and surface approaches) identifed in studies of student learning in engineering contexts. The first study identified the `procedural deep' approach in a group of engineering foundation programme students in the UK, while the second study identified the `procedural surface' (originally termed algorithmic) approach amongst second-year South African chemical engineering students. Both these approaches involve a strategy of focusing on problem solving, but they have respectively deep and surface intentions (the former involving the intention to understand and the latter not). From
both studies it was clear that the approaches students use are adaptations to particular course contexts, and it is suggested that a course focus towards a procedural deep objective might preclude the adoption of a deep approach.

Based on a purposive sample of 15 second-year chemical engineering students, this study investigates students’ conceptions of evaporation, condensation and vapour pressure. During individual interviews the students were questioned on three tasks that had been designed around these topics. Qualitative analysis of student responses showed a range of conceptions in each area, including some misconceptions. A key underlying misconception was the belief that evaporation and condensation require a temperature gradient in order to take place. Many students changed their initial (incorrect) answers when presented with further physical evidence as the interview progressed. The study points to the importance not only of practical work, but of associated conceptual discussions that allow students to reflect on and refine their conceptions.

This study investigates the vacation work experiences of a group of final year civil and chemical engineering students at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.  Situated cognition theory, with its conceptualization of learning as induction into a community of practice through the activity of legitimate peripheral participation, was used to analyze focus group and interview data.  Issues of race and gender appeared prominently and spontaneously in students’ accounts of their experiences.  Access to legitimate peripheral participation was associated with positive identity formation in the role of engineer-to-be, while denial of this access severely affected learning and feelings of self-worth.

This study investigated howwell chemical engineering graduates perceive they were prepared for work
in industry.To this end, sixteen interviews were carried out with a purposive sample of recent University of Cape Town chemical engineering graduates. Qualitative analysis of the interview data showed that graduates felt that overall, they were well prepared for work in industry. They perceived their strengths to be their technical background, problem solving skills, formal communication skills and life-long learning abilities. The following areas of weakness were also identified: work in multi-disciplinary teams, leadership, practical preparation and management skills. The use of interviews for data collection is a significant departure from the methods used in other studies in this area. The rich and contextual data gathered from the interviews justified this choice and contributed to the identification of issues not previously mentioned in the literature. For example, an unexpected finding of the study was that there was a clear link between the technical and nontechnical attributes of engineering graduates, a result which has clear implications for the design of undergraduate engineering programmes.