A Case Study in Active Learning: Teaching Undergraduate Research in an Engineering Classroom Setting

Abstract

Exposing undergraduate engineering students to research provides an opportunity to assess students’ interest in research. Developing research skills at an undergraduate level promotes increased understanding of the basic concepts taught through textbook instruction and provides an awareness of industry relevant issues. This study reports on the introduction of engineering research to undergraduate students in a classroom environment. The course was designed around technical experiments inspired by Michael Faraday’s lectures from The Chemical History of a Candle. Fourteen engineering undergraduates enrolled in a Special Topics in Mechanical Engineering course at a large southwestern university participated in five problem-based learning activities that engaged students using interactive, hands-on lessons and activities designed to teach the research process. Based on student assessments, the lessons learned from this experience revealed students understood the practice of research after only three activities yet, the last two activities provide valuable repetition that reinforce the research concepts and allowed for students’ critical reflection on research processes. Also, only 20% of the students reported enjoying research enough to pursue graduate school, all of which would commit to a PhD rather than a master’s degree.

Keywords:

• undergraduate research curriculum
• engineering research
• active learning
• science
• Michael Faraday

“There is no more open door by which you can enter into the study of natural philosophy than by considering the physical phenomena of a candle.” — Michael Faraday

Introduction

During the fall of 2011, we began this case study to understand the impact of exposing undergraduate students to research early in their engineering studies. We designed the course ME 4330, Special Topics in Mechanical Engineering, to provide students with a basic yet broad understanding of the research endeavor. The methodology for the course includes teaching research using a problem-based learning pedagogy that engages students using interactive, hands-on lessons and activities. Students conducted five technical experiments inspired by Michael Faraday’s lectures from The Chemical History of a Candle. These experiments are the basis for guiding students through each component of the research process, including project planning, investigating background literature, designing and conducting experiments, analyzing results, documenting processes, and ultimately reporting and presenting findings. The primary objective for the course is to introduce students to the research process and develop the knowledge and skills necessary for future research regardless of the specific application.

Rationale

Over two decades ago, The Boyer Commission Report on the undergraduate experience in America (1987/1990) challenged higher education to teach students to think intellectually and critically about important public issues and to develop their skills to address real-life problems (Bransford et al. 1999). In response to these challenges, colleges and universities have implemented a variety of experiential practices to broaden students’ experiences while applying knowledge gained in the classroom. These approaches have many different names: engaged learning, experiential learning, active learning, applied learning, or discovery-based learning. However, active learning is considered the best term to describe these practices (Bonwell and Eison 1991). The goal of active learning is to improve student success through a deliberative intersection of applied curricular and co-curricular learning objectives. The models have been defined as ‘activities that engage the learner directly in phenomena being studied’ (NSIEE 1990), ‘providing opportunities for students to meaningfully talk and listen, write, read, and reflect on the content, ideas, issues, and concerns of an academic subject’ (Meyers and Jones 1993), and, perhaps most succinctly, as ‘learning by doing’ (Smith 2011).

Over a century ago, Michael Faraday’s lectures on The Chemical History of a Candle (1993) were delivered to an audience of young people at the Royal Institution in London, England. Every year beginning in 1826 a professor was bestowed the privilege of delivering a course of lectures for children around Christmas time, such that the series was titled Christmas Course of Lectures Adapted to a Juvenile Auditory. This successful form of outreach inspired children and future scientists by providing them with a fundamental understanding of scientific inquiry. Many topics have been covered in the continuing series, but The Chemical History of a Candle remains a favorite, and the lectures have been documented word-for-word in The Chemical History of a Candle originally published in 1861. The timeless demonstrations and discussions from this book provide the jumping off point for research activities in our new engineering research course.

In the 1800s natural philosophy was the term used to describe science, which is based on observing and understanding our natural world. Engineering is an extension of science because engineering uses scientific understandings in order to change the natural world and place more emphasis on problem solving and design rather than scientific inquiry. Along these lines, technologies can be described as all the things engineers create. Because scientific inquiry is the basis from which engineering design is inspired, incorporating a scientifically-based engineering research course enables students to see how their practices integrate science and engineering and how their research may contribute to the development of a new technology.

Integrating scientific inquiry learning experiences into engineering design classroom activities affords students an opportunity to acquire and use scientific skills that compliment engineering design practices, which allows students to apply prior knowledge with problem-solving abilities (Behar-Horenstein and Johnson 2010). “While there is no single ‘right’ approach, research has begun to show that linking the nature of science to process skills instruction can be effective” (Bell et al. 2004). This undergraduate research case study models the classroom-based approach for successful teaching of research. This is one approach to accommodating an increasing undergraduate student population that show interest in graduate school; with the motivation of guiding students toward more informed decisions regarding their graduate educational goals that would include research. While the number of students within this case study course is 14 and may appear small, usually undergraduate students are exposed to research through the mentoring of a faculty member on a more individualized basis. So, the student to teacher ratio in this classroom case study is a lot higher than the traditional one-to-one experience. Also, the class size could easily be larger than experienced here because the cost of the activities is minimal (or could be designed to be minimal).

Description of Experiments

The primary text for this course was Michael Faraday’s lectures from The Chemical History of a Candle (1993). Each experiment was tied to an individual lecture, and the book provided an excellent source for classroom discussion. The curriculum followed a repetitive process of:

• Discussing reading assignments.

• Teaching components of the research process. Lecture topics included maintaining a laboratory notebook; investigating background literature; identifying scientific questions and understanding their application to engineering design and technology; understanding the relationship between others’ research and your own; understanding the scientific method and the engineering design process; composing an abstract, introduction, approach and methodology; presenting results; presenting an analysis of results in a discussion; composing a conclusion; utilizing different referencing techniques; exploring approaches for dissemination of research; and composing a presentation. Technical Writing for Engineers and Scientists by Leo Finkelstein supplements many of these lectures.

• Teaching fundamental technical concepts associated with each experiment. For example, for the capillary action experiment, the lecture’s learning objective centered on the laws governing capillary flow and assessing parameters that will impact capillary action.

We will describe briefly the course experiments and the key ideas that emerged from the case study. The topics for these experiments included capillary flow, incandescence, hydrogen gas generation, and electrolysis. As a supplement, an analytical study also was designed that taught students the Buckingham pi theorem, a commonly used theorem that allows an experimentalist to scale down large projects and reduce the number of variables.

Experiment 1: Capillary action

The purpose of Experiment 1 was to demonstrate that capillary action is responsible for the delivery of fuel to the flame of a candle. The technical objective was to investigate the effect of porosity on a substance’s ability to perform capillary action. In Faraday’s first lecture, he discussed the manner in which the candle wax is delivered to the flame of a candle and later demonstrated the process using a block of salt and colored water. Faraday understood that capillary action was the process that prompted the delivery of molten wax (fuel) through the wick to the flame.

Inspired by Faraday’s capillary action demonstrations, similar experiments were designed to measure the height of capillary flow through tubes with different diameters or filled with materials (i.e., salt) with different porosity and permeability. In this way, students examined porosity as defined by a material’s ability to absorb or desorb liquids by capillary action. Students then described the mechanism by which capillary action operates through a balance of forces acting on a liquid and the properties of materials that may affect this mechanism. Students concluded by designing a new experiment prompted by their understanding of the science of capillary flow. In this way, science was linked to the engineering design of an experiment inspired by the application of science to the development of a new technology.

Experiment 2: Luminance

The objectives of Experiment 2 included (1) recognizing the difference between reactants and products, (2) comparing the brightness of various solid materials and (3) investigating luminance by adding solid particles that influence a flame’s brightness. In his second lecture, Faraday explained that solid, particulate matter released from the fuel and heated to a point of incandescence provides the flame’s brightness. For example, a bright yellow flame is the result of carbon luminescence at high temperatures. Some of Faraday’s demonstrations were modified into experiments performed using a flux meter to measure the luminance of various solid materials heated to high temperatures using a 6-volt battery connected in series to different wire materials (e.g., iron and magnesium). The concept of illuminance, which describes the intensity of light that falls onto a surface, was introduced and measured.

As in the previous activity, Experiment 2 was followed by the paper-and-pencil design of a new experiment prompted by students’ understanding of luminance. The engineering design of an experiment was discussed in greater detail, and students identified how their understanding of luminescence would improve an existing technology. Then students identified tasks related to the engineering design process. Because this activity was a paper-and-pencil activity, students physically did not execute their engineering designs of the new experiments.

Experiment 3: Hydrogen gas generation

In Faraday’s third lecture, he demonstrated that water is a product of the combustion in a candle. Using a simple apparatus, Faraday was able to condense water from the vapors produced by a flame, even though water is absent from every part of the candle. Essentially Faraday distinguished between reactants and products and showed that hydrogen evolves in the products of combustion and then condenses with oxygen in the air to form water.

In Experiment 3, students generated hydrogen gas from various reactions; when the gas contacted a cool surface, it condensed with oxygen in the air to form water droplets. The hydrogen generation reaction was comprised of magnesium wire reacting with acetic acid (i.e., vinegar). Next, students altered the reactant concentrations and studied the rate at which hydrogen gas was produced. As in the previous two experiments, students designed an experiment to demonstrate a facet of the technical concepts learned. Again, this activity was a paper-and-pencil design activity.

Experiment 4: Hydrogen in the candle

Experiment 4 further reinforced the concept of reactants and products. Water can be decomposed into two elements, hydrogen and oxygen, using electrolysis. The purpose of this experiment was to investigate how electrolyte concentration affects the rate of hydrogen and oxygen production as well as the resistivity of an electrolytic cell. In his fourth lecture, Faraday conducted a series of experiments to demonstrate that the same hydrogen produced from the combustion process occurring in a candle could be extracted from the water formed when it condenses on a cold surface. He achieved this by electrolyzing water and then experimenting with the gases released from the anode and cathode. Compared to the hydrogen tests in his previous lecture, Faraday showed that one of the electrodes was releasing hydrogen while the other was releasing oxygen. For this experiment, students used sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) to create an electrolyte. The electrodes were made from stainless steel and were connected to a 9-volt battery. By using an ammeter connected in series with the circuit and knowing the supplied voltage, the resistivity of the electrolyte could be calculated using Ohm’s Law. Students concluded with a pencil and paper design of an experiment that extended the concepts established in this activity.

Experiment 5: Buckingham pi theorem

As opposed to a hands-on experiment, the purpose of Experiment 5 was to engage students’ analytical skills. This pencil-and-paper activity introduced the Buckingham pi theorem to students as a means to reduce the number of variables used when designing an experiment. Say, for example, a student wanted to understand what determines the diameter of a droplet of water steadily leaking from a household faucet. Upon first observation the student would note several parameters that could affect the droplet’s diameter. For instance, one might assume the diameter is a function of faucet pipe diameter, gravity, fluid density, fluid viscosity, and pressure in the faucet pipe. Thus, the equation necessary to describe precisely the droplet diameter would be dependent on five different variables. One would have to vary one parameter at a time while holding all others constant, observe the parameter’s effect on the diameter, and then repeat this task for all possible combinations. Hundreds or even thousands of experiments must be run, and the data acquired would be immense and difficult to compile. As a result, the process of describing the diameter of a droplet of water leaking from a faucet would be expensive and time consuming.

The Buckingham pi theorem allows experimentalists to group parameters of a system like the leaky faucet into several dimensionless numbers, or pi groups. These pi groups contain several parameters of the experiment that, when any of these parameters are varied, changes the value of the dimensionless number. Experimentalists then can plot this number against the measurable droplet diameter. The benefit of this theorem is that experimentalists can focus on how the value of each pi group affects the droplet diameter rather than trying to observe the many possible combinations of the original five variables.

Another immensely beneficial property of the Buckingham pi theorem is that it allows scaling. Since each pi group is dimensionless and is a particular combination of parameters, experimentalists are concerned only with how the pi group’s value relates to their subjects of study. This aspect makes it possible to assume that the relationship each dimensionless number has to the parameter of interest is always true no matter how big or small the system is—as long as all geometric dimensions of each system are similar proportionally. This fact allows designers to build small-scale models of their products for testing rather than actually building full-scale models.

Method

Participants

Fourteen undergraduates (13 males and 1 female; 11 seniors and 3 juniors) from a southwestern university in the United States enrolled in a Special Topics in Mechanical Engineering course participated in the study. All students had completed the prerequisite courses: Heat Transfer and Fluid Mechanics. Following each activity, students completed a nine-item, open-ended questionnaire, which assessed students’ self-reported levels of engagement during the activities, attitudes toward and level of understanding of the scientific method, level of comfort with conducting primary research and their perceived usefulness of the research resources (e.g., laboratory notebook) (see Table 1). Analytical induction procedures recommended by Strauss and Corbin (1990) were used during an initial reading of the responses to each question in the questionnaire for an overall impression of the data and to gain familiarity with the student responses. Following this initial reading, the researchers coded the students’ responses into small units which identified students’ learning experiences during the active learning activities. Then, these units were coded into themes. Data analysis continued until saturation, or when similar themes in coding emerged (Strauss and Corbin 1990). The following student learning themes emerged (see Table 2): (1) Preference for Teamwork, (2) Documentation of Student Learning, (3) Expression of Learning Gains, (4) Increased Confidence with Conducting Primary Research, (5) Application to “Real World” Problems and Phenomena, and (6) Increased Critical Thinking Skills.

Table 1 Survey Items for Student Assessment of Content Understanding and Active Learning While Conducting Primary Research in Engineering.

1. This course developed an understanding of research methodologies through engaged/active learning assignments. Please list three of your most significant knowledge gains regarding the practice of research.

2. Do you have a different perception or understanding of what research is after taking this course than prior to taking this course? What is your understanding of research now?

3. Do you feel more or less confident in your ability to conduct and pursue research than prior to taking this class?

4. Do you feel more or less motivated to pursue or conduct research in your future school or professional plans?

5. What do you feel is the importance of the laboratory notebook in doing research? Identify if you felt the laboratory notebook was Very Important/Moderately Important/Not Important and please explain why.

6. How did your use of the laboratory notebook change throughout the semester?

7. Did you prefer to work in groups or individually on the active learning components of this course? Has that decision changed the outcome of your experience and/or knowledge gains?

8. On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being most confident, where does your research confidence level fall? Where did it fall prior to this class?

9. For this course, can you reflect on any activities or experiences that you either may have liked to see or see differently?

Table 2 Representative Themes of Undergraduate Descriptions of Learning From Conducting Primary Research in Engineering.

Experiment	Representative Comments
Experiment 1	That rock salt did not absorb as much as I expected. It was cool to use capillary tubes and see surface tension. I found the rate at which water climbed the salt capillary interesting, very fast at first, and then a steady rate after.
	That the bigger the tube the less liquid it picked up, that the course salt does not absorb liquid as well as the fine salt. And how much time it takes the fine salt to absorb all the water that it can.
Experiment 2	The way a flame burns. Differences in the light intensity of flames.
	How hard it is to light the vapor, ease of producing visible carbon, the attributes of each metal’s ability to glow.
Experiment 3	That a combustion of fuel creates water as a product. Creation of hydrogen gas from magnesium and acidic acid is produced very quickly. That the chemical reaction of the metals and acidic acid also created heat.
	The reactions between the vinegar and magnesium. Reaction times of different materials.
Experiment 4	Different concentrations of baking soda produce different volume of H + O2 from water, electric current can cause separation, the oxygen part produced is always half of the hydrogen.
	How the change of the solution concentration affects the rate of gas produced. How the amps passing through the battery and electrodes cause the reaction in the solution. How quickly each solution produces oxygen.
Experiment 5	How to write a formal lab report. Learning how to write a literature review (and conduct one). How to keep a lab notebook.
	How to conduct experiment. How to take detailed notes.
	I know how to do research. Improve my organization and logic thinking. Improve my confidence to communicate with a group.
	Understanding the process behind conducting research. More confidence in asking/finding answers to problems. Confident in article writing for research.
	Literature review/introduction. Writing process of report. Condensing observations of experiment.
	It allowed me the opportunity to become mentally prepared in researching. Also gave me insight into learning how to prepare a research project. It gave me the opportunity to learn what to look for in what it is that is being researched to create an understanding of how it can be useful.

Assessment of Experiments

Experiment 1

Overall, students described meaningful learning experiences as a result of the assessment strategies used for Experiment 1. Two predominant themes emerged in this experiment. First, students perceived the use of the lab notebook as a significant tool for enhancing their learning. Second, qualitative findings suggest a preference for group synergy over individual work.

In Experiment 1, students remarked about their three most significant learning gains from participating in this experiment. Overall, students shared their comments related to the complexity of the capillary action phenomenon. For example, one student shared the following: “I have a slightly better understanding of capillary action. This was a good experiment that allowed me to focus on the lab notebook.” Another student remarked on the following three knowledge gains: “Capillary action in a small tube (hadn’t seen before).” Interestingly, several students listed the use of their lab notebook as a meaningful learning gain. Of the 14 students who completed Experiment 1, 10 had never used a lab notebook prior to this course. On the whole, students remarked positively about the use of a lab notebook.

Furthermore, two students remarked about how this experiment was relevant to “everyday occurrences (such as candles).” Another student reported insight into the importance of materials indicating “how capillary flow works, how quickly it works depending on material make up, and its relation to real world examples.”

Experiment 2

For Experiment 2, students overwhelmingly chose to work in groups. One student remarked that “any discussion about the experiment is wonderfully beneficial. Being able to figure out problems ahead of time is also helpful.” Another student said that he/she chose to work in a group “to gain the perspectives of my group members as opposed to mine.” Three students said that working in groups was easier because “it was easier with more hands.”

Anecdotally, students listed their learning gains more systematically and succinctly in Experiment 2 than in Experiment 1. For example, one student wrote the following: “1. Wax vapor travels through a tube. 2. Weak batteries don’t offer weaker light necessarily (perhaps light is outside of visible threshold) 3. Light output is difficult to measure well (not stable).” Another student wrote: “1. You can light vapors off of a candle. 2. That metals can illuminate from heat alone. 3. That batteries run in-series die very quickly.”

To conclude, the findings from Experiment 2 illustrated a clear preference for working in groups. Students also seemed to develop an ability to self-assess their own learning gains. In terms of critical thinking development, this is an important observation and thus noteworthy.

Experiments 3 and 4

Overall, students remarked about the usefulness of their lab notebooks. This is the most dominant theme from Experiments 3 and 4. At this point, most of the students commented about improved recordkeeping skills. For example, the following feedback demonstrated students’ recordkeeping behaviors:

Has improved and given me the opportunity to re-exhibit the lab in my mind to make more assumptions or to see exactly what might have caused the response of the test… My skill is improved. My setup experiment skill also improved… In experiment 3, measured quantities of water height and volume change in the gas contained had to be recorded. Rather in experiment 1 and 2, observations of the action that took place [were] recorded and analyzed for reasoning…I was more thorough and descriptive in my annotations, as well as including detailed sketches of the experimental set up. I also asked questions about things I observed but didn’t understand or [was] more curious about.

A second emergent theme from Experiments 3 and 4 is an overall self-reported increase in confidence. Most students shared informal information about what they would have done differently in previous or future experiments. For example, one student reported:

Yes, I believe . . . getting the chance to learn from the mistakes being made has helped me to be more meticulous in how the experiment is being done. Has helped with how I record my data in that it does not matter how many pages I use but to rewrite it nice and neatly to understand what was done.

A third emergent theme from Experiments 3 and 4 appeared to be the use of more technical language. When asked what he/she would have done differently in Experiment 4, a student remarked that he/she would have “done more trials to obtain more accurate results.” In Experiment 4, when asked about recordkeeping, a student said that ‘it goes more in depth and schematics are more detailed.’ Another student said that his/her recordkeeping skill ‘has become more elaborate to explain what is happening and all valuable information and adjustments were recorded.’

Experiment 5

Experiment 5 revealed that students’ perceptions of research changed significantly as a result of active learning strategies within the classroom. Interestingly, students remarked that they were more confident pursuing research now than before taking the course. Samples of student responses included: “I have a better understanding of research steps to flow. Before, I did not have a strong understanding of the order of research”, “‘More confident that it’s not my thing”, “More, although my lack of creativity hinders my confidence a little bit”, “Yes, I understand research is difficult but rewarding”, and ‘How to conduct [an] experiment and how to take detailed notes.”

When asked whether students felt more or less confident in their ability to conduct and pursue research than prior to taking the class, 100% (14 of 14) responded that they felt more confident. Students also self-reported their exposure to research as a positive experience, even if they were uncertain as to whether they would pursue their own line of research. Students also realized that research is rigorous and time-intensive. Therefore, it is clear that undergraduate exposure to engineering research is impactful. For example, students made the following comments when asked if they felt more or less motivated to pursue or conduct research in their future: “I don’t necessarily feel motivated to conduct research as it is very demanding; however, I now feel confident I can conduct research”, ‘I feel more motivated now in pursuing or conducting research”, ‘I feel the same. Although I’d say that my interest in it is a little higher now than before, but it was never something I wanted to pursue in the first place”, “I feel more motivated. I was not even considering going to graduate school before this class. It is now definitely an option”, and “Yes I do have a different perception. I’ve never liked research but after taking this class and speaking with grad students I’m strongly considering [graduate school].”

For each experiment, students were asked to list the three most significant knowledge gains. As the following chart demonstrates, students were able to list their learning gains more clearly and succinctly at the conclusion of the semester (Experiment 5) than they were at the beginning of the semester (Experiment 1). These comments suggest that students were able to define a broader research skill set rather than a singular skill that was relevant to one experiment only. Because of students’ exposure to research, they were able to assess the development of their own research skills.

Reflections and Conclusion

The purpose of the study was to examine students’ descriptions of their learning experiences after participating in five technical experiments inspired by Michael Faraday’s lectures from The Chemical History of a Candle. Based on student descriptions, the students’ self-reported understanding of the practice of research emerged after three activities. That is, while students reported gaining sufficient understanding of the research process after three experiments, it is likely the last two experiments provided valuable repetition which reinforced the research concepts and allowed for students’ critical reflection on research processes. This finding supports Bloom’s steps of cognitive learning which begin with knowledge development, application, and analysis and end in synthesis and evaluation especially in engineering curricula (Swart 2010). Overall, the undergraduate students’ participation in engineering research impacted them positively, though only 20% of the students reported enjoying research enough to pursue graduate school, all of whom reported would commit to a PhD rather than a master’s degree. Additionally, students’ perceptions of their own research skills improved through the use of active problem-based learning strategies within the classroom as reflected in the students’ increase in their self-confidence to successfully conduct a research project.

Though this study was conducted in a course with 14 students, future studies on active learning in engineering and other technical fields should consider adapting this approach to larger courses with larger class sizes. Given large class sizes pose many barriers to successfully implementing active learning projects, many educators have implemented similar active learning projects in large classes using innovative instructional technology and methods. For example, Efstathious and Bailey (2011) introduced Audience Response Systems (ARS) to increase student participation in a large bioscience class showing a significant increase in student discussion and level of knowledge. Others such as Miller et al. (2012) and Parmelee et al. (2012) integrated group-peer models such as Team-Based Learning and Peer Assisted Learning to facilitate active learning in their large classes finding these resulted in increases in student accountability, class preparation, and application of content to solve realistic problems. Even if educators do not incorporate undergraduate research into their courses, integrating active learning assignments into courses of any size is consistently shown to increase student-student and student-faculty interactions and increase learning gains especially in courses in the STEM fields (Knight & Wood 2006). Based on our findings, we see great potential in incorporating active learning experiences such as undergraduate research into the Engineering curricula. We recommend introducing an engineering research course elective into the undergraduate engineering curriculum to provide students with exposure to the research endeavor and be better informed about the demands and commitments they will encounter in their graduate education.

Acknowledgements

M. Pantoya is grateful for support from the National Science Foundation under contract DRL-12487, and encouragement from our program manager, Dr Edith Gummer.