Dear All,
Following on from my previous recent post -
To start things off I'll describe briefly the material I teach and some
of my experiences of delivering it.
Please note I am not holding this up in any way as 'good practice'
merely as how I do it. I reserve the right to be rubbish at it.
My apologies to those on this list to whom this isn't relevant.
The Teaching.
I teach Engineering undergraduates and specifically Biomimetics to 4th
year MEng undergrads, here in Exeter. It's a quarter of a module themed
on current research in materials, and to put this into their context the
biomimetics follows parts on auxetic materials (negative Poisson's
ratios), very hard materials, and materials used for rapid prototyping.
It's 'student centered' in that they are expected to do their own
literature searching for papers, and indeed the assessment is based on
these research papers.
I ask that, after 3/4 introductory lectures, they search the scientific
literature via Web of Science for papers describing research on a
specific chosen material which in some way has been inspired by or
informed by Biological materials. I ask that they find one key paper and
perhaps 2-3 other related papers, that they read these, read around the
underlying biology/technology/physics if it's new to them, and try to
put the work into a wider 'engineering' context, i.e. manufacturing,
environmental regulation, and performance. This is essentially what they
are asked about in their exam. They then have regular tutorials with me
to sort out difficulties and discuss issues. I ask that they make copies
of their papers and give them to me so I can read the papers to help
them along and ultimately judge their efforts. This means I sometimes
find I have physics homework of my own !
This is useful for me and the students. They tend to cast their net over
very wide seas when searching partly because of their naivety (type in
'biomimetics' into WoS and see how many hits you get) and partly because
of their own personal interests/experience. Anyway, they usually turn up
something I've not seen before, they gain some subject specific
knowledge, and they begin to realise what research actually is, how it
moves forwards, and how terrifyingly large the research world is.
My Experiences.
As the students get to chose which topic they are reading about, I was
expecting them to be very keen and show lots of interest in doing their
own thing. This, sadly, isn't always the case and some treat it as
another hurdle they wish to get over with the minimum required effort.
Some, perhaps the majority, do however begin to show real enthusiasm and
a desire to learn more about their particular topic.
Is there a way I can encourage/force the surface learners to get more
involved ?
The main 'teaching' problem with delivering this module in that the
students are very used, at this point, to being presented with the
material which they must grapple with and often the tools with which to
do this. Many of the students have very great difficulty with the
reversal of roles they are forced into and find it difficult to initiate
the literature searches; the goal posts have moved ! This may be a
cultural and location specific phenomena but I suspect only in its
degree. As a result ssome students find this very liberating whilst
others find it very confusing.
I'd be very happy to have comments on this back and I'd be even more
happy to hear of other people's experiences teaching Biomimetic type
material.
Regards,
Chris Smith
--
Dr Chris Smith,
School of Engineering and Computer Science, University of Exeter,
Exeter, Devon, EX4 4QF, UK.
tel 01392 263652, fax 01392 217965
http://www.secs.ex.ac.uk/research/profiles/profile_cws.htm
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