This project develops and promotes the use of a cyber-enabled infrastructure, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Concept Warehouse, that could be used throughout the core chemical engineering curriculum (Material and Energy Balances, Thermodynamics, Transport Phenomena, Kinetics and Reactor Design, and Materials Science). The goal is to create a community of learning focused on concept-based instruction, within the discipline of chemical engineering. Conceptual questions, both as Concept Inventories and Concept Tests, will be available through an interactive website maintained through the Education Division of the AIChE, the discipline's major professional society. It uses a flexible, query-driven information storage system so that conceptual learning can be deployed by programs and instructors as it best fits into their curriculum and culture. The overall objective is to lower the barrier for using concept-based instruction and assessment so that more chemical engineering faculty incorporate concept-based learning into their classes. Workshops will be offered to faculty and department administrators to explain the value and methods of concept-based instruction.
This NSF award supported development and dissemination of a resource to promote and facilitate adoption of research-based pedagogies for conceptual learning. Central to the project is the website http://cw.edudiv.org, the AIChE Education Division Concept Warehouse. The website was created in the first year and was initially a searchable repository of multiple choice concept-oriented questions called ConcepTests within a self-contained learning management system. It has since grown into a much broader resource supporting faculty wishing to improve the conceptual understanding of their students. The current site offers a searchable and filterable database of ConcepTests, a collection of concept inventories and other tools, and simulation-based guided inquiry activities. The site allows for both online usage (either in a self-contained mode or using a learning management system), and offline usage by offering downloads of ConcepTests in either Microsoft Word or PowerPoint formats. The project has also supported dissemination of the resources contained on the site, including workshops at several American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) and American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) conferences. Onsite workshops were also held at institutions across the United States, and the site’s resources were featured in a workshop at the quinquennial ASEE Summer School for Chemical Engineering Faculty in 2012. The long-term sustainability of the dissemination plan is evidenced by the integration of the Concept Warehouse in national engineering faculty development programs, including the National Effective Teaching Institute (through Milo Koretsky) and an annual AIChE teaching workshop for new and prospective faculty members (through David Silverstein). To date over 10 conference presentations in multiple countries have been made related to the site and three journal publications (one involving this PI on this collaborative project) have resulted. Perhaps more significantly, the site has been developed such that it is also a platform for conducting research in the field of STEM education, and has proven its value on several related projects to date (search research.gov for investigator Milo Koretsky for details on some examples). Its development has enabled insight into the propagation of innovation through a profession, facilitated development of automated textual analysis of student responses, and consolidated the resources developed through several other NSF-funded education projects into a single well-designed and maintain site with a broad audience and linkages to professional societies. With 181 institutions, 533 faculty members, and almost 10,000 students registered and submitting over 260,000 responses as of August 2014, the Concept Warehouse has had a successful instantiation meeting or exceeding the objectives of this project.
